To Never Leave You
by AndromedaStarr
Summary: Sheppard’s team rescues a girl who has been running from the Wraith for five years. Why have they been chasing her? Hint – she’s not a Runner. Read it, it’s probably better than you think. BeckettOC, faint McZelenka preslash.
1. Chapter 1

**Summary:** Sheppard's team rescues a girl who has been running from the Wraith for five years. Why have they been chasing her? Hint – she's not a Runner. Read it, it's better than you think. Beckett/OC, faint McKay/Zelenka pre-slash.

**Season:** Current, set just after Trinity. I did not see Siege, so I have no idea what a Wraith attack is like, and this story banks on Daedalus and Prometheus being on Earth. I don't know what the situation is in the show or where the ships are actually supposed to be, so please, suspend your disbelief.

I took a certain amount of creative leeway with the technological details, not having seen anything of season one except the first two episodes, and not being at all proficient in physics, medicine or engineering. Where there are logic holes, I apologize and beg forgiveness.

**Disclaimers:** I do not own all the characters you recognize. Unfortunately. But I do own Nyx and her family, a few planets and the plotline, for what it's worth. Which isn't much, since I'm not making money off this. Hear that? Not. For. Profit. Don't sue.

**Acknowledgements:** Thank you to jennamajig for unwittingly giving me the idea of a lacerated kidney, not to mention the symptoms and treatment, in her excellent fic Could Have Been. Any other plot threads or details that don't belong to me, please review and let me know where I inadvertently stole them from so I can give credit where credit is due.

* * *

Dr. Elizabeth Weir had seen it all. From parasitic aliens to those which absorbed the life energy from the human body through their hands to two consciousnesses being forced to share the same body to the destruction of three-quarters of a solar system…yes, she pretty much had seen it all. 

_Nothing they do can surprise me anymore_, she thought ruefully, looking down at the Stargate. Major – no, sorry, Colonel – Sheppard was due to return any moment now with his latest acquisition. And speaking of that latest acquisition, she remembered back to what he had said.

"_We're bringing back somebody," he'd yelled, and she had heard the sounds of weapons discharging. "She was running from the Wraith, we can't leave her here. That all right by you?"_

"_Is she dangerous?" she had asked him, cautious._

"_She's fine," had come the distracted and irrelevant reply. "Look, I'm about to dial out; there's a major firefight going on over here. Can we bring her or do we give her to them?"_

_And faced with that ultimatum..."You have a go," she'd replied crisply, and ended the communication._

Now it was just to wait and see what specimen of humanlike alien the well-intentioned but ultimately overoptimistic John Sheppard would bring through that Stargate and into Atlantis. Honestly, Sheppard was a sweetheart, but sometimes he was really too much.

The alarms went off, and she left the office to hover over Moran, who was manning the off-world com station. "It's Colonel Sheppard," he reported just as the Stargate activated and the dependable military boys downstairs took up their positions. Weir had no problem with the military on the whole, but recently their involvement with Atlantis had become irritating. One certain Colonel Caldwell in particular had gotten into the habit of pissing her off. Thank God he was back on Earth.

Just then Sheppard came barreling through the wormhole, emerging from the liquid-like blue surface at a run and almost tripping over his own feet. Teyla came through behind him, not a hair out of place. Chances were they'd been running for their lives, yet she seemed perfectly calm. She hadn't even broken a sweat.

McKay burst out of the Stargate like a bat out of hell, followed by Ronan and Lorne, who half-carried between them a most bedraggled-looking object that might have been a person. The wormhole shut down. Sheppard was already heading up the stairs. He was panting.

"We didn't find Ford," was the first thing out of his mouth. "He's in a Wraith prison on another planet. Rodney's got the coordinates, and he brought back a thingy."

She raised one eyebrow. "A thingy?"

"Yeah. I'm not sure he knows what it is, but he swears up and down it's absolutely harmless." Sheppard coughed, breathing hard, and she could see only the barest hint of doubt in his eyes. "We took it off one of the Wraith we killed. Never seen anything like it."

Weir decided he really was insane. "John, do you remember what happened the last time Rodney swore up and down nothing would happen? Three-quarters of a solar system blew up!"

"I know, I know." He sighed. "But we have to start back trusting him eventually, so why not now? It's really small, though, and I don't think it's dangerous."

"And that?" Weir used her chin instead of her finger to point. Downstairs, the ragged creature was struggling to free itself from Ronan, who was restraining it easily. "Does it speak English?"

Sheppard doubled over, hands on his knees, and made a concerted effort to get his breathing under control. "I have no idea. She's not exactly domesticated. She's probably been running wild in the forest on that planet for years." He straightened up. "But she was fighting them, so she can't be that bad, right?"

Weir stared at him. "She didn't ask for your help?"

He scratched his head sheepishly. "No. But we couldn't leave her there, the place was crawling with them..."

She sighed heavily. He really was unbelievable. "Take her to a cell. Restrain her. I'll go down in a few minutes to see if I can communicate with her." She shot him a look. "You need to stop bringing back strays, John."

Sheppard gave a grin. "I'll take that under advisement."

* * *

Weir paused before the doors and nodded to the guards. "Stand aside. Leave the door open, and stay close." Both nodded, and one pressed the button that controlled the opening and closing of the doors. 

The cell was basically an empty room, absolutely featureless save for the door. The girl Sheppard had brought back with him – it seemed to be a girl at first glance, anyway – was seated cross-legged on the floor in the dead center of the room, her hands bound before her. She wore torn, tattered clothing vaguely similar to the style of Ronan's wear, and the sleeves had been ripped off, showing tanned, corded arms covered in scratches and filth. The unkempt hair that fell in front of where, anatomically, her head should have been prevented Weir from even guessing at her features, but dark eyes glinted through the curtain.

"Hello, I'm Dr. Weir," she said in her careful, diplomatic voice. "What's your name?" There was silence. She tried a different tactic. "I'm sorry your hands are tied and that you're confined, but I can't let you go until I know something about you. If you give me some information about yourself, we can get you out of here and you can have a look around."

Silence. She exhaled. "Okay. Have it your way." She turned, walked out. The guards closed the doors behind her, and she was on her way to her office when she ran into someone she thought would do better at communicating with the girl.

"Ronan," she said, and he turned. "Would you go and see if you can get her to talk? You probably have more in common with her; she might be willing to talk to you."

He seemed to consider it, as much as Ronan ever considered anything. "Okay."

"Good." She smiled. "I'll wait outside."

* * *

Ronan almost had to duck as he entered the cell; the Ancients had not taken his six-foot-five height into account when they were designing Atlantis. He couldn't see the girl's face beneath her hair, but he recognized her clothing instantly as what had once been hardy Phyrxian hunting garments. Phyrx, of course, had been destroyed five years ago, but then again, those shreds of cloth she wore could well have been five years old. 

He surveyed her expressionlessly for a moment, and folded his arms. "Who are you?"

She cocked her head, and he caught a glimpse of sunburnt skin, but then the hair shifted and he could see nothing again. She did not answer, and patience was not a virtue Ronan possessed in any great quantity. He reached down, grabbed her arm and lifted her bodily to her feet, slamming her back against the wall. "Who are you?" he repeated, and pushed her hair out of her face.

All at once, she reacted. Her bound hands came up, and she punched him in the stomach – not hard enough to do any damage, just enough to momentarily stun him. Her head snapped to the left, and there was a flash of white teeth and she bit down, her teeth unexpectedly sharp, on his right hand.

Ronan reacted just as instinctively, grabbing both her wrists in his left hand, and at the same time jerking his hand from her mouth, with the result that her teeth cut through his skin. He sent her back into the wall again, harder now than before, and spun on his heel, striding from the room in mingled anger and confusion.

Weir was outside. "Well?"

He held up his right hand, not slowing down. "She bites."

She seemed to have difficulty comprehending that revelation. "She bit you?"

"That she bit me doesn't surprise me," he said. "What surprises me is that she didn't take off a finger."

"Maybe she likes you," Weir suggested wryly.

Ronan missed the irony. "Unlikely."

"Well, go to the infirmary and let Dr. Beckett check that out for you," she directed. "But at least you got a reaction out of her. I want you to go back in there later and try talking to her again. Maybe you might want to be a little less violent this time."

He merely grunted.

* * *

On Ronan's second trip into the cell, somehow he felt he knew precisely what to do to make her talk. He stood before her, looking down. She was in the same position she had been in two hours ago. "Get up," he said. 

She glanced up, and he thought she grinned beneath her hair. "No," she said, in a husky voice that Ronan might have described as nicotine-ravaged if he'd known anything about cigarettes.

He arched an eyebrow. "So you do have a tongue."

The girl shook her hair back somewhat and thrust her tongue out at him. It was unusually long, though not freakishly so. Then, just as quickly as it had come out, it disappeared back into her mouth.

"Impressive." Ronan relaxed his stance slightly. "Do you also have a name?"

"I used to," she replied, and her eyes flickered to the floor. From what he could see, her face was as dark as his, though coated in mingled sweat and grime. Her hair had not formed itself into dreadlocks as his had done, yet given a few more months it might have been well on its way. Her features were regular, her mouth seeming unnaturally red in the dark face.

"What was it?" he asked her.

She hesitated, as though she had left her name behind her and it was lodged somewhere in a dusty niche of her mind that had long since been untouched. "Nyx."

He inclined his head to her. "I am Ronan Dex."

"Do you fight the Wraith?" she queried suddenly.

Ronan was unsure where the question had come from. She herself had taken down a Wraith on the planet they'd found her on; chances were that she had been running from them, like him, for years. "Yes," he answered. "All my life."

Now Nyx extended her bound hands to him. "Then let me go."

"Give me one good reason why," he responded automatically.

"We share a common enemy," she told him, rising to her feet. The top of her head was substantially below his chin; he was possibly eight inches taller than she was, which did not, however, make her short. She exuded a curious aura of strength. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." She shook her wrists at him. "So, my friend, let me go."

"I don't have that authority," he told her.

Nyx cocked an eyebrow and her head. "I didn't think you were the kind of man who would serve others," she said contemptuously.

Ronan swallowed his annoyance. "Who are you? You're not native to the planet we found you on. That place has been desolate for years."

She lifted her head. "I am a Phyrxian," she said, her voice filled with the pride characteristic of the Phyrxian race. But there was one problem – the Phyrxian race was supposed to be extinct.

"Phyrx was destroyed," he told her matter-of-factly.

"Yes." Nyx nodded, and now the Phyrxian arrogance dripped from her every pore. It was almost amusing that she could retain her superior air while standing bound in a cell. "I am the last of my breed."

Ronan's lip curled. "And how does it feel to know that I could kill you in an instant?"

"If you know who the Phyrxians are," she said, tilting her head back to meet his eyes, "then you know we do not know fear."

Phyrxian fearlessness was legendary throughout the universe. Ronan had indeed heard stories of their determination in the face of insurmountable odds. Their race was as known for its willingness to fight even when a cause seemed lost as for its pride. They were a powerful people – or had been, rather, since she was all that was left of the race.

He leaned down to her, invading her personal space, which he knew she would perceive as a threat. "Not even fear of death?" he asked softly.

Nyx's jaw set mulishly. "I _said_ we do not know fear. Of anything." Now she raised her bound hands between them. "I could have released myself from these bonds hours ago if I had so chosen."

"Then why didn't you?" His tone was lightly mocking.

She shrugged, managing to make the movement elegant despite the circumstances. "It was amusing to watch the diplomatic efforts of the woman – Weir, I believe she called herself."

Ronan studied her. She was a most peculiar being, this Phyrxian girl. "Do you think this is a game? They will kill you if they decide they can't trust you."

Now Nyx gave a reckless laugh. "I do not fear them, Ronan. Nor do I fear you. If you wish to kill me, you may do so, as long as you make it a fair fight."

He rolled his eyes. "If I had the authority to release you, I would have done so a long time ago. I do not wish to kill you. You fight the Wraith, as I do. We're on the same side."

"Many throughout this galaxy wish me dead," she said, and her eyes were serious.

Ronan quirked an eyebrow. "Why?"

"My father."

He bit. "Who was your father?"

She smiled, but there was no humour or pleasure in it. "Even you might know his name. Vessago."

Ronan did indeed know the name, as, he suspected, did almost everyone in the galaxy. Vessago was the name of a legendary Phyrxian ruler who had overseen the affairs of one of the largest kingdoms on the planet. A man of great gifts but doubtful stability of mind, Vessago had been a genetic timebomb trapped in a chain of insanity that was centuries long, condemning the kingdom to an endless downward spiral of madness and ruin. Revolutions came and went, but his tainted blood seemed to go on forever – his father had been mad, as had his father before him, and Vessago had married, if Ronan was recalling this right, his sister.

Now he looked at Nyx with a new wariness. "Vessago."

She seemed to smell the question even as he was thinking it. "I'm not mad," she said, a tinge of amusement behind the words. "Do I seem insane to you?"

Ronan left that question unanswered. "I have to talk to Dr. Weir. I'll be back."

* * *

"Well?" Weir asked as soon as he came through the doors. "Did you get her to talk this time?" 

"She spoke," he replied noncommittally.

She looked taken aback; shocked, he thought, that she, a trained diplomat, could not coax even a sound from the girl's mouth but he, Ronan, was able to bring forth much intelligible speech. "What did she say?"

"Her name is Nyx. She's Phyrxian. She fights the Wraith."

Weir blinked, unsure what this meant. "So...what do you think?"

"She's hiding something," he said, and it was the truth. He did feel that Nyx was hiding something. As forthcoming about her race and her father as she had been, there was something dark and unknown in the girl.

"Like what?" she asked him, bewildered.

Ronan turned his head, looked down at the doctor. "I don't know," he said slowly. "She's hiding it."

Weir, in her confusion and excitement, seemed to let the remark slide. "Should we trust her? Can I release her from that cell in the confidence that she's not going to destroy Atlantis or kill my people?"

He considered the question. "She's not crazy and she's not a fool. I don't think there'll be chaos if you let her go. With all the armed men in this city, I think it very unlikely anything will arise that can't be dealt with."

She had to think about this for a moment. "Okay. Go back in there, check her for weapons and cut her bonds. Take her straight to the infirmary for a medical, let Dr. Beckett have a look at her. Tell him to take her to see Heightmeyer as soon as she's done. I want a full psychiatric evaluation of her if she's going to stay here."

Ronan nodded and went back into the cell. Nyx was still standing. There was nowhere she could be hiding a weapon in those rags. "Looks like she's decided to trust you for now," he said, and drew a knife from his belt. "Let me cut those ropes."

"No need," she replied, and with an almighty flex of her muscles burst the ropes around her hands. The bonds fell to the floor, and she looked up at him. "I told you I could have freed myself," she said, and now she sounded faintly disapproving that he hadn't believed her.

He was surprised at her strength, but none of it showed in his eyes or on his face. "Dr. Weir orders that you go to the infirmary for a medical examination."

Nyx wrinkled her nose a fraction. "Why? I'm not sick."

"Don't tell me," he said, and marched her down the corridors to the infirmary. She had a surefooted, graceful stride, as though she had grown up on the side of a mountain and had experience in moving swiftly on uneven ground. He knocked once on the door and then pulled it open without waiting for a response.

Dr. Carson Beckett took in the sight of the girl. "Let me guess," he said to Ronan. "Dr. Weir wants a full medical?"

Ronan nodded. "She said to tell you to take her to Heightmeyer and get a full psychiatric evaluation done." He looked to the doctor to see if he was saying the words correctly.

"All right." Beckett didn't seem confused by the gibberish he had just spouted, so Ronan imagined he had said everything right. "Thank you, Ronan. You can go."

He nodded and looked at Nyx, who was eyeing Beckett with some suspicion and a great deal of what looked like incomprehension. He doubted she could understand the doctor's peculiar accent; Scottish, Sheppard had said it was. Whatever that meant.

Leaving Beckett to deal with Nyx, Ronan was careful with his head as he exited the infirmary and closed the door behind him. Time for some food.


	2. Chapter 2

Beckett looked closely at the new arrival at Atlantis. "Hello," he said. "My name is Dr. Carson Beckett. And you are?"

She frowned, and then seemed to register his words. "I am Nyx."

He realized her difficulty. "Ah, it's the accent that's bothering you, then? Well, I'm sorry, lass, but I can do naught to change it. Please, have a seat." He turned, collecting his instruments into a small tray. "So what planet are you from?"

"Phyrx," she said solemnly, and she was staring down at the floor. "It was destroyed five years ago. I have been on the run from the Wraith since then."

Beckett winced in sympathy. "Ronan ran from them for seven before I removed the tracking device in his back." He frowned, and turned back to her. "You haven't got one of those, have you?"

Nyx shook her head. "No. They never caught me."

Now he came to her side, slipping on latex gloves. "All right, I'm just going to check your eyes, ears and whatnot, give you a once-over and then run some tests on your blood. Is that okay with you?"

She regarded him thoughtfully, as though she had some misgivings, and then asked, "Blood?"

"Yes, it's perfectly standard. I do blood tests on everyone in Atlantis periodically." Beckett picked up the small syringe and held it up in front of her. "It won't hurt much. But I've got to examine you first, all right?"

Nyx seemed to dwell on this, and then nodded. "Okay."

"Lovely." He flicked on the penlight and shone it into first one eye, then the other. Her eyes were so dark he almost couldn't tell where iris left off and pupil began, and had to do the routine again. Her pupils contracted instantly. "Any vision or hearing problems?" he queried as he looked into her right ear.

"No," she replied slowly as he shifted to check her left ear. She was confused by his actions, he realized, but he knew from experience that it was better for both of them to just get things over with and hold off the explanations for another time.

Beckett picked up a tongue depressor. "Okay, now open your mouth and stick out your tongue as far as you can." She did, and he blinked in surprise at the length of it. Masking his shock, he pressed her tongue down lightly with the depressor, shining the penlight down into her throat. "All clear."

Nyx looked vaguely bemused. "What did you expect to find?"

He smiled. "Any bumps, bruises, injuries, scratches? I saw the bite you gave Ronan."

She grinned, her teeth an explosion of whiteness against the sunburnt skin of her face. "He did not hurt me, if that is what you mean. No, I don't have any injuries. Old scars, perhaps, but nothing new."

"All right. Time to take your blood." Now Beckett stretched the length of rubber around her right upper arm and tied it. "Make a fist for me." She clenched her hand, and the veins were readily visible on the inside of her forearm. He slid one gloved hand beneath her elbow and straightened it, and guided the needle expertly into a vein with the other. Her blood filled the syringe swiftly, and he withdrew it from her skin, pressing a small piece of cotton over the wound. "There, that wasn't too bad, was it?"

She gave a reluctant smile. "I thought you were going to do it with a knife."

His eyes widened as he set the vial to centrifuge. "Are they very violent where you come from?"

Nyx snorted. "How did you guess?" Then the humour melted from her face, leaving behind a lost sort of perplexity. "Do you know, I cannot remember Phyrx at all...I have tried to, but somehow all my memories seem to have just slipped away."

"Sometimes that's how people deal with tragedy," he told her gently. "They repress the memories." She looked up at him, and he swore he saw the glint of tears in her eyes, although her face was the same, strong and determined. "But that's not my field, that's Dr. Heightmeyer's field, and since you seem to be in fine health, barring the pending results of the blood test, I'm supposed to take you to see her." He stripped off the gloves and threw them in a bin beneath the table. "Come along, then."

She followed him in silence along the corridors to Heightmeyer's office. Beckett, personally, appreciated having a psychiatrist in Atlantis; the situations they fell into and out of with astounding rapidity were often enough to drive even the sanest individual to the brink. As far as he knew, none of them had ever suffered a breakdown, but when the lovely Lieutenant Cadman's consciousness had been trapped in McKay's body, Heightmeyer had finally been able to flex her counseling muscles a bit.

"Hello, Doctor," he said cordially, and guided Nyx into the office. "This is our newest arrival. I've examined her, she appears to be in excellent health. Dr. Weir wants you to do a full psychiatric evaluation and report your findings to her."

Heightmeyer, a small blonde woman with a pretty smile, nodded. She wasn't smiling now, though; she looked harassed – keeping track of the mental health of several hundred people must have been taking its toll on her. "Thank you. Are you sure she doesn't want me to write it out longhand and FedEx it back to Earth too?"

Beckett cracked a smile at that. "You'd really have to ask her. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must be getting back to the infirmary." He gave her a nod, and smiled at Nyx, who wore apprehension all over her face. "Goodbye, then." He closed the door on the pair, and set off with brisk steps for the infirmary, wondering with an inward sigh how many people had managed to get injured in his absence.

* * *

"Hello, Nyx. I'm Dr. Kate Heightmeyer." She studied the girl carefully, noting the wariness on her face. "Please, sit down. Make yourself comfortable." Nyx sat, leaning back in the chair, her hands in her lap. "What planet are you from?"

"I am a Phyrxian," the girl answered, and her chin lifted. "My homeworld was Phyrx, but it was destroyed five years ago. I traveled through the Ring to other planets, running from the Wraith. Your people found me on Vargas. I was there for some moons."

Heightmeyer was jotting notes on the topmost page of the small stack on her lap. "Tell me about your family," she said pleasantly.

Nyx's face darkened. "I do not have family," she replied flatly. "They were killed by the Wraith. I am the last of my race." She looked away briefly, but the doctor saw no sorrow in her eyes. "My father's name was Vessago," she said suddenly. "My mother was called Alasia."

"Did you have brothers or sisters?" Heightmeyer asked her.

"Seven older brothers," she said. "No sisters. My brothers died bravely on the battlefield against the Wraith. I would have done so as well, but Eoin forced me to go through the Ring." She looked up, and seemed to notice the psychiatrist's polite confusion. "Eoin was closest to me in age. He cared for me in a way the others never did. He told me I had to leave, that I was the only chance for Phyrxian blood to live again."

Heightmeyer nodded. _Early tragedy_. "Were you close to your parents?"

Nyx seemed restless. Her hands twisted in her lap, though her voice remained calm. "My mother died during my birth. My father did not care to have a female child, so he raised me as his son. He taught me to fight and hunt, and I saw pride in his eyes when he looked at me. He gave me responsibilities as he saw I could handle them, and I commanded a regiment of our kingdom's army when I was fifteen."

Her eyebrows raised. "You had a military upbringing, then?" she asked in her measured doctor's voice, and the girl nodded. "What was Phyrxian culture like?"

Nyx frowned, and something shadowed moved behind her eyes. "I do not remember. I cannot remember Phyrx at all. I see broken images of Eoin and my father, but I cannot picture my other brothers, or my mother. I remember the final battle against the Wraith, but little else."

Heightmeyer made a note. _Memory repression_. "Nyx," she said intently, leaning forward. "Have you ever been under hypnosis?"

The girl's head cocked. "No," she responded curiously.

"I'd like to try it with you," Heightmeyer told her. "Hypnosis is just a state of relaxation, really. It allows the natural defenses of the mind to come down so that I can get access to the memories you may have repressed. It'll tell me all the things about your past that you can't remember."

The expression on Nyx's face flashed directly from guarded curiosity into anger. "What does my past matter to you?" she asked sharply, and now her fingers curled, her hands forming fists where they rested on her thighs. "Why do you people feel the need to awaken my demons?"

"It's purely standard," Heightmeyer told her soothingly, but in her head she was puzzling over the girl's choice of words. "What makes you think you have demons in your past if you can't remember them?"

Nyx broke eye contact, turning her head to the side. A muscle jumped in her jaw. "The Wraith chased me for the last five years," she said in quiet fury. "I had no place of refuge, nowhere to hide where I could be certain they would never find me. From planet to planet I fled them, killing those I could, running from the rest and never knowing why. But you would never understand." And now her eyes blazed as she met the doctor's gaze. "Why would I have forgotten if it was not painful to remember?"

Heightmeyer's hand was beginning to cramp from all the notes she was taking. "Nyx," she said gently, trying not to antagonize the girl, "why did the Wraith chase you? Why do they want you so badly?"

She looked down, her eyes fixed unseeingly on the floor. "I don't know," she whispered at last. "I told you, I cannot remember my life on Phyrx. I do not know what I may have done that would have angered them so."

"Which is why hypnosis might be a good idea." Heightmeyer set aside the paper. "You might have to relive some very painful memories, but wouldn't it be better at least to have those than to know nothing at all?"

Nyx looked uncertain. "I suppose."

The psychiatrist paused, knowing that what she was about to say might annoy the girl, but knowing it was the only way to convince her. "Why not? What are you so afraid of?"

Nyx's head snapped up, and she turned the full force of her baleful glare on Heightmeyer, who just managed to disguise her urge to cower. "I fear nothing!" she spat. "You will perform the procedure. _Now_."

She nodded. "Okay." Taking a deep breath, she looked at the girl. "Shall we begin?"

* * *

Sheppard, in the commissary, was making swift work of his potatoes while listening to Ronan's extremely abbreviated account of his brief conversation with Nyx. He was glad he'd been able to help her; Sheppard was a gentleman at heart, loath to order his men into mortal danger as well as to fail to assist anyone who was already there. And Nyx, from the sound of it, could have used the help; according to Ronan, she was the last of her race.

"Any chance that there are more Phyrxian survivors?" he asked. "I mean, you thought you were the last of the Satedans too, but lo and behold, there are others."

Ronan shook his head as he shoveled food into his mouth. He was improving with a knife and fork, Sheppard thought, although he still wielded the knife as though it were a weapon rather than a utensil. "No. They never used the Ring on their planet. She was the first. Phyrx was destroyed just after she left, if my memory serves me rightly. Everyone on the planet was dead, dying or fighting a losing battle against the Wraith. When we heard news of it, everyone on Sateda agreed that it was probably for the best."

Sheppard whistled. "Did the Wraith do it?"

"Rumour was that the highest-ranking man on the planet set the self-destruct," Ronan replied. "The Phyrxians had long since anticipated the coming of the Wraith and had lowered charges into deep cracks in the crust as a last resort. The highest-ranking man on the planet, by the way, would have been Vessago." He looked up. "Her father."

"Wow." Sheppard laid down his cutlery, suddenly more interested in the story than in the food. "So why's she by Heightmeyer? Does Dr. Weir think she's nuts?"

Ronan shrugged, continuing to devour his food. "Vessago was crazy enough. I don't think Nyx is, but maybe Heightmeyer can see something we can't. I don't really understand how that whole evaluation thing works."

"That makes two of us," Sheppard assured him, and gestured to his right hand, which had a sizable piece of gauze taped around the knuckle of the forefinger. "Are you sure she's not crazy? She _bit_ you."

Ronan sighed, and Sheppard immediately recognized the look on his face. It was the there-are-just-some-things-you-will-never-understand look. "She's Phyrxian," he said simply. "They're different."

"Which is supposed to mean what exactly to me?" Sheppard wanted to know.

Ronan rolled his eyes. "The Phyrxians made madness into an art form," he said dryly. "I'm not sure if it was deliberate or unintentional – there was a lot of inbreeding on the planet since none of them used the Ring, and they weren't technologically advanced enough for interplanetary travel. Case in point: Vessago's wife was his sister."

Sheppard grimaced. "But you don't think she's crazy."

"She doesn't seem to be. But like I said, maybe Heightmeyer will be able to tell for sure." Ronan pushed aside his empty plate. "I'm curious as to why the Wraith would chase her for five years. They didn't choose her to hunt like they did me; she's not a Runner." He shrugged again. "Maybe we'll find that out too."

Sheppard frowned. "She's not a Runner? Are you sure?"

"Positive. The Wraith never touched her." Ronan looked up as Teyla passed by the door of the commissary. "I'll see you later," he said by way of farewell, and headed for the exit.

Sheppard perused the remains of his potatoes with great care, pushing them around on the plate with his fork. Ronan was right, of course – why were the Wraith so keen on this one girl? _Maybe it's a grudge against the whole race_, he thought, but then shook his head.

"I smell a rat," he muttered, and got up to go find Weir.

* * *

Heightmeyer stapled the four pages of notes she had made together and looked up at Nyx, who was pale beneath her dark skin. "It's all right," she said in what she hoped was a relaxing way. "All of that is over now. It's in your past." She got up. "I have to go see Dr. Weir."

"Where do I go while you talk to her?" the girl asked.

"Teyla will take you to let you get cleaned up," Heightmeyer said, seeing the woman in question coming down the corridor, and beckoned to her. "Nyx, this is Teyla Emmagan. Teyla, this is Nyx. Can you take her to get her cleaned up a little while I go talk to Dr. Weir?"

Teyla nodded. "Certainly." She turned to Nyx. "Follow me." As the two disappeared down the corridor, Heightmeyer spun and made fast tracks for Weir's office. Sheppard was there, and he and the doctor were involved in what had been, from the expressions on their faces, a lengthy and pointless discussion so far. She managed to catch the words 'Rodney', 'thingy' and 'crazy' before she shut off her inquisitive valve.

"Excuse me," she said, knocking on the half-open door. "You wanted to see me about Nyx?"

"Yes, thank you." Weir seemed flustered, but then John Sheppard did have that effect on people. "Please, come in, sit down. What have you learned?"

Heightmeyer exhaled. She had no idea where to begin, and they were both looking at her expectantly. "What passed for child-rearing in Phyrxian culture could have provided material for a whole psychiatric conference on infant trauma and predisposition to psychotic behaviour," she said. "According the memories I've obtained from her under hypnosis, her past was generally an orgy of death and mutilation."

Sheppard shot Weir a glance. It said plainly, _See?_

"They had these tournaments," Heightmeyer continued, "sort of like jousting in the Middle Ages. When Nyx was five she watched one of her uncles have his skull split open with a broadsword and another carried screaming from the field with a spear through his pelvis."

Both of them winced. Weir glanced from Sheppard, who looked revolted, to Heightmeyer. "So is she crazy?"

"Amazingly enough, she doesn't seem to be," the psychiatrist replied, "but I'd like another session with her just to verify her sanity."

Weir nodded. "Granted. You can take her again this afternoon. Let me know as soon as you're sure of anything."

Now Sheppard leapt in – as characteristic of him, with both feet. "Why are the Wraith hunting her?" he asked, and Heightmeyer found it vaguely amusing that he thought she would know. "There has to be a reason. They can't just be chasing her around the galaxy for fun, she's not a Runner."

"Well, Colonel," Heightmeyer said cordially, "I will do my best to find that out for you this afternoon when I put Nyx under hypnosis again. I'll let you know as soon as I have anything." She turned her attention to Weir now. "She was raised in a violent culture and met with tragedy very early in her life, but she seems to be very controlled. She's a bit like Teyla, actually, keeps her emotions inside of her. And she's arrogant, but I suppose if we can handle McKay Nyx should be no problem."

Weir looked doubtful. "Are you positive? She _bit_ Ronan."

"Did Ronan tell you he slammed her into the wall?" Heightmeyer allowed herself to smile. "Effective, but antagonistic. It's not surprising that she fought back. I mean, I don't have a PhD in psychiatry or anything, but I think she's remarkably stable."

Sheppard looked about to snicker, but stopped himself in time. He coughed, straightened his face with what looked like a monumental effort and looked innocently at Weir, who was eyeing him dangerously.

"All right," she said, waving a hand at Heightmeyer. "Let her get something to eat and clean up first, then see if you can find out why the Wraith want her so badly."

The psychiatrist nodded. _A woman's work is never done_, she thought ruefully, and started back to her office.


	3. Chapter 3

Teyla nodded at the finished product. "I believe you look better this way," she said. "My clothes fit you well."

"Thank you." Nyx looked considerably different from the disheveled creature Ronan and Lorne had dragged through the Stargate. She was clean, all traces of dirt removed from her golden-brown skin, and she was surprisingly good-looking now that her face was visible. Her dark hair, still messy although much less tangled, was pulled back in a high ponytail, and she wore traditional Athosian garments – leather leggings and a long-sleeved woven tunic, belted at the waist.

"Are you hungry?" Teyla asked.

"Starved."

"Follow me. I will take you to the commissary." Teyla started walking, and Nyx followed. "The food is good, although it may seem strange at first. You will soon become accustomed to it."

Dr. Beckett rounded the corner ahead of them. He looked worn out; his hair was sticking up in front as though he had run his hands through it too many times, and the lines around his eyes seemed more deeply etched than Teyla remembered them.

"Good afternoon, Doctor Beckett," she sad pleasantly. "We are on our way to the commissary. Perhaps you should consider going there too. You do not look as though you have eaten for the day."

He opened his mouth as though he was going to answer her, but then his eyes flickered over her shoulder onto Nyx, and no sound emerged from his throat. Teyla was mildly amused. "Have you met Nyx, Doctor?" She stepped aside from where she had been standing in front of the girl. "I think she looks much better now."

"We have met," Nyx answered softly, and bowed.

Beckett seemed at a loss for words. He nodded. "Your blood work came back clear," he said to Nyx, and ran a hand back through his hair again, now looking bewildered and overwhelmed.

Teyla did not understand the excessive emotions. _Do these people never rest from their feelings?_ she wondered. "Are you coming to the commissary, Doctor?" she asked politely.

"Oh." Beckett appeared disconcerted. "Yes, I'll be there shortly." He nodded, stepped around the two and disappeared down the corridor. Teyla looked back and saw him run into a lieutenant and then nearly trip over his own feet.

"He is a good man," she said to Nyx as if to assure her of the fact. "He does not seem himself today. Perhaps it is you who has this effect on him."

The girl tilted her head to one side. "Perhaps," she allowed, but she did not give the impression that she was particularly interested.

Teyla sighed inwardly. She did not understand the people from Earth, and now it looked as though she would never understand the girl from Phyrx. Very well. That only left Ronan. He, at least, was not beyond her comprehension. That was some comfort.

* * *

"Oh whatever, Zelenka," McKay snapped at the Czech. "It wasn't even three-quarters of a solar system. It was five-sixths."

"Which is worse!" Zelenka threw up his hands in a mixture of agitation and despair. "Five-sixths of a solar system _gone_! Destroyed! Poof!" He snapped his fingers in front of the other scientist's face, plugging in a laptop with a jerk. "Do you know how many people could have been living there?"

McKay looked up, suddenly pale. "No," he whispered. "It – it was deserted, wasn't it?"

Zelenka's expression softened briefly. "Yes, it was deserted. But what if it had not been?" Now his tone sharpened again at the impatient look on McKay's face. "When you screw up, you really go all out, don't you? You were close to killing yourself – and if that were not enough, Major Sheppard as well!"

"Colonel Sheppard," McKay responded dismissively, reaching over to command the computer to run a scan. That was the thing with alien devices; trial and error was all well and good when you knew what you were dealing with, but when you had a small, innocuous-looking Wraith-derived object seated before you, the process of discovery could be hazardous to one's health. It certainly didn't look like anything he'd ever seen before. "Look, Zelenka, I don't need to explain myself to you or to justify what I did. Yes, okay, I was wrong. Are you happy now?"

"It is not your error that is so disturbing," the other astrophysicist responded, "but the reason you made this error. You are too confident in your abilities! You are not God!"

McKay turned on Zelenka, now ignoring the running program completely. "I have made my apologies already!" he shouted. "I apologized to Elizabeth and I apologized to Major Sheppard or Colonel Sheppard or whatever his rank of the week is. What do you want me to do, huh? Go back in time and fix it?"

The Czech opened his mouth to utter some probably snarky retort, and for all McKay knew it could have been a good one, but he never got to hear it because at that moment there was a blinding flash of light and a concussive shock wave that shattered all the glass in a thirty-foot radius as the world around them blew up.

* * *

Nyx found the abundance of the substance called Jell-O in the commissary quite bemusing. There were a great many colours, some seeming preferable to others by most residents of Atlantis. Taking her cue from a young Athosian boy seated several tables down from her who was contentedly devouring a mountainous expanse of the blue variety, Nyx piled the same colour onto her plate.

Most of the food available here tasted unlike anything she had ever eaten before. The meat was familiar to her, yet even that had a peculiar flavour. But then, Nyx supposed she had been running for five years; she was hardly civilized anymore.

Teyla, seated across the table from her, appeared perfectly satisfied to watch her eat. Nyx was clumsy with the eating utensils she had been given – a knife and fork – but she managed them fairly well, having a vague and distant memory of having used similar tools before back on Phyrx. She had also realized she was extremely hungry. Earth food, while strange to her senses, was filling, and she was glad for it.

Finishing her meal of steak, potatoes, Brussels sprouts and Jell-O, and not recognizing most of those words, Nyx stood. "I would like to see Atlantis," she told Teyla. "Can you show me around?"

"Certainly." The Athosian inclined her head and they set off at a brisk pace. Surprisingly, Teyla could be fairly conversational when she had a fixed topic to speak about, or at least so it looked to Nyx, and she proved knowledgeable about the many parts of Atlantis. She told her about Colonel Sheppard and his naming of the Ancient ships – puddle jumpers – and Dr. McKay and his great genius. "Speaking of Dr. McKay," Teyla said, pausing outside a room, "this is his laboratory."

"Hey, Teyla!" A man with messy hair who Nyx recognized as the leader of the team who had brought her back through the Ring waved and beckoned to the Athosian from a good way down the narrow corridor. He had an idiotic grin, but appeared to be smarter than his looks belied, and likeable.

"Excuse me," Teyla said apologetically. "It seems Colonel Sheppard wishes to have a word with me." She turned and headed down the corridor to where the man was standing. And that was about the time when everything went to hell.

There was a dazzling burst of light that sent formless shapes dancing behind Nyx's eyelids, and she threw one arm up automatically to cover her face. The expanse of glass before her exploded into tiny fragments of razorsharp death, the shattered pieces flying in a halo around her as the shock hurled her into the air, and she flew...

And then her world went black.


	4. Chapter 4

Nyx came back to herself slowly and painfully. The ceiling above her was bright and swarmed with a kaleidoscope of colours. She blinked once, twice, and her vision cleared, and she found herself looking up into a pair of brilliant blue eyes.

"Morning, lass," he said, the by-now-familiar accent – Scottish, Teyla had said it was – sounding unusually lovely to her ears, and then he was shining the universe's brightest flashlight into her eyes. "I really must congratulate you on your astonishing lack of injury. It's almost alarming, considering you were thrown through a glass door and almost over a railing."

Nyx gave a hesitant smile. The muscles in her back felt like they'd been tied into a single immense knot, and her head as though Ronan had had a go at it with his enormous fists. "There is nothing broken?"

"Not as far as my limited medical expertise in dealing with off-worlders goes." Beckett offered her a strained grin. "A few minor cuts. Nothing broken or damaged beyond repair. You've got a terrible bruise down one side of your back, and some sore muscles from your rather hard landing, so you might want to stay here and rest up a bit." His gaze flicked elsewhere, and he said, "Excuse me a moment."

Nyx turned and saw two other beds occupied. One held a wiry man with wild blond hair and a cut on his head. He was unconscious, a broken pair of glasses lying on the sheet covering his chest. The occupant of the other bed was groaning. She recognized him as McKay.

"My head hurts," he was saying. "My back hurts. My nose itches. Carson, are you even listening to me?"

Beckett was readying the same kind of device he had used to take blood from her earlier. "Yes, Rodney, I'm listening," he sighed. "You've got a mild concussion, sore muscles and a sprained ankle, although I'm surprised you haven't noticed that yet. Now are you going to roll over and take this injection like a brave man, or am I putting it in your IV?"

Nyx watched in detached amusement as McKay's face worked. "Which one works faster?" he asked hopefully.

"Intramuscular injection," Beckett responded promptly and with obvious pleasure. "It's not going to hurt, don't behave like a wee bairn..."

Nyx frowned. _Wee bairn?_

There was a yelp from the other bed, and a cheerful, "All done!" from Beckett. She was disappointed she hadn't been able to see the fabled intramuscular injection, whatever that was, and exhaled as the doctor turned his attention to the silent patient between her and McKay.

"Is Zelenka going to be okay?" McKay asked, and for the first time she saw worry flicker across his face. "I set the scan to run, we were arguing to pass the time...I have no idea what happened."

"What happened, Rodney," Beckett said with what must be infinite patience, "is that the device you stole from the Wraith – I believe you were calling it a 'thingy' – blew up. Broke all the glass within thirty feet of the lab. Radek seems to have taken it worse, but he'll be fine given a few days of rest." He glanced back at McKay. "I don't want either of you thinking about what happened until I give you clearance to leave. When I say rest, I mean _rest_."

"Okay," McKay replied meekly. "What about her?" He looked at her and saw she was awake. "Oh. You're awake. Hi." His cheeks flushed pink. "I, uh –"

"Nyx, this is Rodney McKay, a rare case of genius and idiot existing in the same body," Beckett picked up. "Rodney, I believe you remember Nyx? She came back through the Gate with you this morning."

"Oh. You, uh, look really different." McKay, on the other hand, looked extremely uncomfortable. "Are you – are you hurt?"

"I'm fine," she said reassuringly, "merely bruised. Was it you who set off the explosion?"

"Oh, Rodney doesn't do these things purposefully," Beckett said, injecting something into a tube leading into the one called Zelenka's arm. "He was playing around with some technology he didn't understand –"

"Excuse me," McKay said icily, bristling, "but I believe I'm the astrophysicist here –"

"Do you mean the device you took from the Wraith your man Sheppard brought down?" Nyx queried, more to stop them from aggravating her headache than anything else.

McKay stared, openmouthed. "Yes. You know about it?"

"It was a compact explosive device," she said, "but I suppose you have already realized that. It contained a small amount of combustible material mined from..." She trailed off. "The point is, others of its kind are used by the Wraith to bring destruction to places they cannot enter. They are thrown through windows and into cracks and such and are, I believe, detonated by a remote device held by the Wraith."

McKay seemed to have completely forgotten his pain. "But I was just running a scan on it. It shouldn't have –"

"The Wraith are very careful with the sphere," she said. "The particle interaction is extremely delicate. One single interfering atom can cause a partial detonation." She blinked innocently. "As you have no doubt learned."

Beckett, standing beside Zelenka's bed, was staring at her outright. McKay looked bewildered. "How do you know all of this?"

Nyx paused. How _did_ she know it? "I don't know," she confessed. "I cannot remember my past." She gave a slight smile. "Perhaps I was a scientist on my homeworld. But the sphere has a much greater potential for destruction than the havoc it wrought earlier."

"Good thing you only _half_ screwed it up," Beckett said out of the corner of his mouth, and McKay's eyes narrowed. "Now, Rodney, please, do us all a favour and go to sleep. Unless, of course, you want me to sedate you?"

McKay's jaw snapped shut with an audible click, and he glared mulishly at the doctor. "Fine," he ground out, "but only because Radek needs silence."

"Good." Beckett nodded, and pulled up a chair by Nyx's bed. "Zelenka doesn't really need silence," he murmured to her in an undertone. "I've given him enough tranquilizer to keep him unconscious for at least twelve hours."

She smiled. "Because of McKay?"

He sighed. "You have no idea how much of a pain in the arse Rodney can be. Granted, he's saved all our lives half a million times at least, but whenever he gets injured and I know he's coming here, I try as hard as I can to get someone else to handle him." He gently brushed his fingers through her hair in what she knew was a purely habitual action and asked, "How are you feeling?"

Something in Nyx warmed at the touch of his fingertips on her scalp, and she could feel the blood rise to her cheeks. "I will be fine," she said softly. "My back is painful because I am lying on it, and my shoulders are stiff, but that is to be expected after getting caught in an explosion."

Beckett looked thoughtfully at her. "Can you sit up?"

Nyx braced her hands against the bed and sat up, her legs at once drawing themselves in so that she sat cross-legged. She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, and placed her head in her hands, her loose hair falling around her face. The position gave her comfort; it was her customary posture. She saw him stand from the corner of her eye, and absently wondered what he was doing, but then his strong but gentle hands came down on her shoulders and she let out an involuntary groan.

"Your muscles are tight," Beckett said quietly as he kneaded the knots out of her, the kinks seeming to unravel themselves willingly beneath his fingers. "I'm no physical therapist, but I think this should help. How is it feeling?"

Nyx's eyes had drifted shut. She let her lips curl into a faint smile. The simple pleasure she felt from the massage was difficult to put into words. She settled for, "Wonderful."

And it was. She couldn't understand why she was so affected by the fact that he was treating her just as he would have treated any of the others on Atlantis – who, surely, he was closer to. She thought it might have something to do with the fact that she had spent five years with only herself and the occasional dizzying flashback for company.

"Better?" he asked her, the voice breaking into her reverie, and she sorely missed his hands when he removed them from her shoulders.

Nyx looked up and gave him a truly grateful smile. "Thank you," she said. "For everything you have done for me."

He shrugged, half-smiling at he did so, and she saw how tired he looked. "It's nothing, lass. Get some rest."

"Will you do the same?" she questioned. "You're exhausted. And I can see you worry about them even though you know they'll be all right." She shifted on the bed, and winced slightly at the twinge in her back. "Things are never quiet, are they?"

Beckett sighed. "No. If it's not Rodney, it's John. Between the two of them they've spent so much time in this infirmary I think they should be granted citizenship." Now he shrugged, getting slowly to his feet, and stretched his arms over his head, yawning. "See how well you can sleep. You can leave in the morning if you feel up to it." He placed a hand lightly on her head. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight," Nyx said, and carefully lay back on the bed, watching his back as he disappeared into his office. She pursed her lips in thought. This Beckett was a peculiar man, different from the rest. Something about his eyes or his voice calmed her troubled spirit, and this was rare – Phyrxians were by nature both obdurate and violent. Around the doctor Nyx realized she had become the antithesis of her character: docile and obedient. A curious talent.

She let her eyelids fall shut. She too was tired. Besides, she knew he would be there in the morning. And somehow that seemed like a very good reason to open her eyes again.

* * *

"How's Rodney?" was the first thing Sheppard asked Beckett when he saw him in the morning. "That explosion was really something else. Has he figured out what it was?"

The doctor looked as though he'd gotten three hours of sleep at best, and with good reason. "Yes, he knows what the thingy is, if that's what you're after." He gave Sheppard a disapproving look. "You can see him if you promise not to agitate him or get him to think about work. If you can't do that, best you not see him. He's being surprisingly well-behaved at the moment, and I wouldn't want that to change."

"I have an idea his behaviour's more due to the company than anything else," Sheppard suggested dryly. "How are Nyx and Zelenka, by the way?"

"Radek will be all right, but he needs a quiet environment and loads of sleep, which he won't be getting with you antagonizing Rodney." Beckett raised an eyebrow. "Nyx is all right. She was hardly injured, really. Just bruises. She'll be out of the infirmary in a couple of hours, once I give her a clean bill of health."

"You know, I saw her fly through the air." Sheppard shook his head. "It was completely surreal, like it happened in slow motion. There was glass everywhere, where she fell...she cleared the ground for fifteen feet before she landed and then slid another seven or eight. And then we saw McKay and Zelenka inside, and I thought, _'_Oh crap, he's really done it this time.'" He had the gall to smile, then turned his attention to more serious matters. "So what is the thingy, anyway?"

"Well, Nyx said it –"

"Wait, wait, _she_ told you what it was?" Sheppard looked like he couldn't believe his ears. "Rodney didn't figure it out himself?"

"He hardly had the chance to, really. It was a weapon of some sort, used by the Wraith..." Beckett rolled his eyes and heaved an exasperated sigh. "Oh, all right, you can see him. _Five_ minutes, Colonel, I mean it."

Sheppard gave the wickedest grin this side of Pegasus. "Gotcha," he said, and disappeared into the infirmary.

Beckett shook his head. _The man is insane_. He followed the colonel, and saw Zelenka blinking blearily under the artificial light. "Hello, Radek," he said cheerfully. "And how are you feeling this morning?"

"Blind," came the distracted response. "Where are my glasses?"

"They were broken in the explosion," Beckett told him, eyeing the mangled frames on the sidetable. "But don't worry, we've got a spare somewhere about. Feeling all right, then?"

"My head aches a little," Zelenka replied, squinting. He clearly couldn't see much. "I am tired and sore, but I will be all right. How is McKay?"

"I'm doing just great now that my lab is out of commission, thank you," came the retort from the bed on the left. "But you can take some comfort in knowing that I now know precisely what the thingy was. It's not even a thingy."

"Yes, and you were just about to explain it to me," Sheppard interjected.

"And I was just about to kick you out of this infirmary for provoking my patients," said Beckett, looking down at him. "Please, Colonel. Radek should not be excited, and I'm having a hard enough time with Rodney as it is without you interfering. Nyx, on the other hand, has been a wonderful patient so far." He gave the girl a pointed glance. "A _quiet_ patient."

"Yes, well –" McKay was clearly back to normal from the way he was gesticulating. Habitually, he used his hands to punctuate everything he said, and was possibly the only person Beckett thought might become unable to speak if he lost an arm. "– some of us have a lot to say, and if we can use these spheres against the Wraith –"

Beckett tuned out and turned to Nyx, letting the other two listen to McKay's technobabble for as long as they could stand it. "Well, you certainly seem to be feeling better. About ready to get up and do a jig, I expect?"

She smiled. "Perhaps in a few days I will be able to dance. At this time I believe I'm merely able to go about day-to-day business."

He checked her pupils, which responded normally, and, on impulse, pulled down her lower eyelid. The skin was pale. "You're a bit anaemic," he told her, and he knew his face coloured. "Are you, ah, losing blood at the moment?"

Nyx bit her lip, and he could tell she was trying not to smile. "No," she said, doing a remarkable job of sounding as though it had been a routine question, "but by nature my Phyrxian constitution requires that I consume a great deal of meat in order to balance the mineral content of my blood."

"Ah." Beckett nodded. "Steak's on the menu for you, then." He drew the curtains around the bed to the obvious chagrin of McKay. "I want a look at your back, see how that bruise is progressing. So you're going to have to take the scrubs off." He motioned to the clothing she was wearing.

Nyx looked briefly confused, but sat up and managed to get the short-sleeved garment over her head as he conscientiously looked the other way. She crossed her legs, leaning forward, and he winced involuntarily at the dark purple splotch on the upper right side of her back. It extended hazily downwards for quite a distance, disappearing into the waist of her pants.

"Tell me where it hurts," he said, and moved his hand over her back, pressing lightly around the indistinct outline of the discolouration. She said nothing, but he instinctively knew from the changes in her breathing where was merely uncomfortable and where was agonizing. Her skin was perfectly smooth, the muscles of her back developed from five years of running and God knows what else had come before.

"This could be worse than I thought," Beckett said at last, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his coat in order to conquer the temptation to touch his fingers to the satin that covered her body. "I think you may have lacerated your kidney. I'm going to need a urine sample." He gestured to the scrub top, careful not to look at anything but her face. "You can put that back on. I'll be back in a moment."

He emerged from the enclosure and shot a glance at McKay. "What?" the astrophysicist wanted to know.

"Lacerated kidney," Beckett hissed. "For God's sake, Rodney, don't play with things you don't understand!" He turned and strode off to prepare an IV, knowing that he was leaving in his wake one bewildered scientist.

Personally, he had no idea what had made him say that. He supposed it was the fact that Nyx hadn't been involved in the experiment at all and yet she had been caught in the explosion. And injured, furthermore. Fairly badly, at that, and through absolutely no fault of her own. He cared about Rodney in his own way, honest he did, but sometimes he really wanted to throttle the man until he turned blue. If only because of his unfailing arrogance.

Beckett slid between the curtains with the pole and the bag hanging from it. Nyx blinked. "Are you going to put that in me?"

"It's painkiller and rehydration all in one," he told her. "I'm going to take you to the bathroom and you're going to give me a sample of your urine, all right?" He held the small cup out to her. "Put it in here."

She squinted. He could imagine how alien the request must have seemed. "Okay." She slowly shifted her legs towards the edge of the bed, and he slid an arm around her, helping her to stand. With his face so close to her he could smell some sweet fragrance, almost like incense, that seemed to emanate from her hair. Mentally he berated himself, even as he helped her to the bathroom.

"You're all right?" he asked, hoping she would know that he was asking if she could do it alone.

Nyx had the good grace to smile. "I will be fine," she assured him, and closed the door behind her. Beckett leaned against the wall and looked over at the two scientists and the colonel. Sheppard had a twisted smile on his face, the left side of his mouth curled and his left eyebrow raised, as though the two were connected. McKay looked like he was trying not to giggle. Zelenka, who couldn't see three feet in front of his face without his glasses, looked mystified.

Beckett sighed and rolled his eyes, and then there was the sound of the toilet flushing and the door opened. Nyx handed him the container, which had been covered securely with the lid, washed off and then dried with the most scientific precision, and he saw red. Literally. Across the room, from the corner of his eye, he saw McKay and Sheppard give identical grimaces, all trace of humour gone.

"That is not normal," she said quietly, "even for me."

"Definitely lacerated," he told her, leading her back to the bed, and sighed. "All right, I'm going to have a catheter put in to measure your output and track your bleeding." He saw worry flare in her eyes and hurriedly added, "I don't think it's serious, lass, but it's just to be sure. It's probably minor."

"Internal bleeding is not good." Nyx nodded as she eased herself back onto the pillows. "What is a catheter? Is it painful?"

Beckett bit his lip. "There'll be some discomfort, but nothing you can't handle." He smiled. "I'll be back." Turning, he pushed through the curtains again, narrowing his eyes at McKay, who, to give him some credit, looked sufficiently chastened to not warrant another outburst. He headed to the cupboard and started extracting everything the nurse would need – this one he was not doing himself. It was going to be a long day.

* * *

Nyx, now dressed in a gown and having eaten a fair quantity of blue Jell-O in lieu of lunch, lay silently on the bed after the catheter had been inserted by a brisk, efficient nurse. Beckett watched the red-tinged fluid drip into the bag. "All right," he said, "I'm going to do a urinalysis and then I want to do a scan of your abdomen, to make sure it's nothing worse than a grade two." He must have seen her puzzlement, because he added, "Don't worry with the medical jargon. All you have to do is try to rest."

She looked up at the clear bag of liquid hanging from the steel pole to her left. A tube connected the contents of the bag to a needle in her arm. He had called it an IV. "I am not worried," she told him. "I know you will take care of me." She closed her eyes and fell into sleep, perfectly secure in the knowledge that she would be fine.

Sheppard had finally managed to extricate himself from McKay's clutches when he ran into Teyla. "How are they?" she asked. "Will they be well?"

"Rodney's fine," he said. "Zelenka got it worse, but I think what bothers him most is that he can't see without his glasses. Nyx is hurt more than we all thought, she has a laceration to her kidney. Doc Beckett says she'll be all right, but she's in there for a few more days."

Teyla nodded. "Does Dr. McKay know what the Wraith device was?"

"Oh yeah." Sheppard grinned. "Wait until you hear this one..."


	5. Chapter 5

Beckett gathered the results together and put them in the file he had labeled simply 'Nyx'. It would have to do until she could remember her last name – or they could come up with one for her. Her injury was mild, as he'd suspected, a grade two laceration to her right kidney. Her parenchyma, fortunately, remained unaffected, which meant in English that there was no need for surgery. She would require three to five days of bed rest and possibly a transfusion. _Make that probably_, he corrected himself, checking her level of haemoglobin and her haematocrit ratio.

He rose from his seat in the office and cracked his neck. He was tired, but then again, he was used to being tired. He thought ruefully that if he ever had the free time to get a full twelve hours of sleep he'd probably lie awake for the first eight out of habit.

McKay, thank God, was asleep. This was ostensibly the best behaviour he'd been on in his life, although who knew what reward he was expecting at the end of it. _A reprieve from intramuscular injections, no doubt_, Beckett thought, and chuckled.

In the bed next to him, Zelenka slept soundly, his light hair having drifted to fall across his forehead. Out of sheer custom, he reached down and settled the wayward locks around the scientist's face. He didn't really know Radek, but he liked him. The Czech, at any rate, was a far better patient than the Canadian, and a great deal more forbearing. Granted, McKay was an endearing figure with his breathless way of speaking and his boundless enthusiasm, but frequently he could be a wee bit overwhelming. Rodney made everyone else on the base look like they were moving in slow motion when he was operating at full-tilt McKay speed.

The curtains were still drawn around Nyx's bed, and it was through these that Beckett now stepped. She was motionless, her face relaxed and untroubled by the issues that seemed to draw her eyebrows together in the faintest of frowns when she was awake. Her dark hair was loose on the pillow beneath her head, and her caramel-coloured skin glowed with an ethereal, indefinable light. She had the longest eyelashes he had ever seen, and as his gaze lingered on them he felt his heart skip a beat.

She was beautiful, this girl, in a way he found it hard to rationalize even to himself. She stirred emotions in him he had never thought he possessed and that he found beyond the power of his words to describe. It was, quite frankly, disconcerting, but then Beckett had no time to be disconcerted as he suddenly found himself drowning in the endless blackness of her eyes.

"Hi," he whispered. He had no breath to speak.

Nyx began to stretch, but stopped herself with a hiss when she moved something she shouldn't have. "How are the others?" she asked him, flicking a glance to the nearly empty bag of urine at the side of her bed. She was still bleeding.

"They're fine," Beckett told her, forcing his eyes away from hers. "Sprains and concussions, mostly. I'm not worried about them. You're the one with internal bleeding."

"Then I am the one you worry for?" she queried softly, and looked up at him. The pools of nothingness and everything that were her eyes swallowed him whole, and he lost his awareness of the infirmary and the other two people in it. All he saw was that she was the most incredibly beautiful creature he had ever been fortunate enough to behold in his life.

Somehow she made it all worth it – the air of panic that was the common mood around Atlantis now that a Wraith attack was pending, the long hours and the bitter pain that came whenever he lost a patient, the astonishing self-control he had to fight to find within himself whenever he had to deal with McKay. In that moment he knew – he truly understood – why he had to be a doctor.

It was so he could save people like her, people who were better than the world in which they lived, people who could make life worth living with the barest hint of a smile. And even as his mind managed to put itself back together enough to think that thought, Carson Beckett knew he was in love with her.

There was the lightest of touches on his fingers, and he glanced down to see her hand cover his. "Are you all right?" she asked, concern in her eyes, and something dormant inside of him smelled a new chance at life.

"Yes," he finally said, and he took her hand in both of his. "It's just...well..."

Nyx smiled, and reached out for him with her right hand, the one she didn't have the IV in. He closed his eyes as her fingers threaded themselves into his hair, and leaned forward as she pulled him down to her. And then she was kissing him, and threatening to stop his heart.

Beckett's mind drained entirely of thought, and his hands rose, fingers following the smooth curves of her face. Her lips parted, and before he knew what was happening there was the light of a thousand stars shattering behind his eyelids in a single soundless explosion that seemed to contain everything important in his life, and in that instant of sublime ecstasy Beckett understood beyond the shadow of a doubt how a man could devote himself to something so intangible as faith.

The kiss broke, and he stared at her, lost, powerless to move or speak, his breath caught somewhere in the neverending passage between his lungs and his mouth. All he knew was that every particle of his body ached for her; he wanted more than anything in the world to take her in his arms and –

And she had a lacerated kidney. Beckett exhaled, trying to force the desire out of his blood. "You're injured," he said, but she was tracing his lips with her fingertips and his self-control was threatening to get up and bolt. "We can't risk damaging your kidney any more than it already is or you'll need surgery..." He trailed off, staring into her eyes. Damn, she was unsettlingly beautiful. He was going to have to get used to this.

"It is fine," Nyx told him quietly, and he saw the ghost of a smile flit fleetingly across her face. "I just want you to hold me." She surveyed the small bed. "But there isn't enough room for us both."

He sighed. "No, infirmary beds are built for single occupancy only." He smiled at her. "But I can sleep in the chair if you like."

She shook her head, and ran her hand gently down the side of his face. "You too need rest." She gave a reckless grin. "I think I can survive for nine hours without you."

Beckett nodded, trying to clear his head, and stood up much too suddenly. The room spun wildly around him, and he understood with a pang of embarrassment that his dizziness was due to the fact that minimum blood had been flowing to his brain. He steadied himself, bent over Nyx and placed a light kiss on her forehead, his lips lingering there just long enough to make him lightheaded again from the scent of her hair.

"Sleep well," he whispered. "I'll see you tomorrow."

"Okay." She closed her eyes, and it sent a wrenching pain through his chest at how much she had obviously come to trust him in the two days she had known him. "Goodnight, Carson."

Beckett smiled. "Goodnight, Nyx."

* * *

McKay watched from beneath half-closed eyelids as the doctor made his way out of the infirmary. He sat up, wincing a little as the knotted muscles in his back protested. He inched himself towards the side of the bed and managed to stand, careful not to pull on the needle taped to the inside of his left forearm. His left ankle was a little tender, but he felt better for the vertical position, his mind tossing up an explanation about blood flow that he didn't really care about.

He caught hold of the pole, using it to aid him, and took a few hesitant steps. Nothing he couldn't handle. He moved slowly to the side of Zelenka's bed. The scientist looked utterly peaceful, with just the barest hint of the lines that normally scored his forehead. McKay resisted the completely uncharacteristic urge to reach out and smooth them from the pale skin.

With extreme and almost neurotic care he made his way across the infirmary to where Nyx lay, and parted the curtains just slightly. It was obvious why Beckett had lingered so long – the view was heavenly.

McKay's typically overactive scientist's brain found itself being lulled into a blissful trance by the serenity so clearly present on the girl's face. Her cheekbones called to him to run a finger along their tortuous curves, while her lips begged to be kissed. It was only with supreme self-control that McKay managed not to touch her – his hand was already halfway outstretched when he caught himself.

_Attraction to an alien. I'm reasonably sure this is not good._ He glanced down at the bag of urine that hung from a hook at the side of her bed. The fluid was a dark yellow, tinged liberally with red. McKay winced, knowing that on some level this was his fault.

"Do not blame yourself," she said, and his heart nearly leaped into his mouth. She was awake, looking at him, her eyes dark and tranquil, like pools of black water so deep no currents ever disturbed them. "It is not your fault, Rodney."

McKay thought he was going to pass out. He held onto the pole a little tighter. "I, uh –"

"You are not good with words," Nyx said for him, and smiled. His breathing sped up a little. "I have noticed." She took his right hand gently in hers. "There is much in you that is to be admired, only you must not believe yourself above correction. Nevertheless, great things are expected of you."

He felt a sheepish expression crawl onto his face. "I blew up five-sixths of a solar system," he said quietly, "and if that wasn't enough, now...now this." Embarrassment twanged sharply inside him. "I never meant for this to –"

"I have told you, it wasn't your fault." She pursed her lips in what might have been disapproval, suddenly reminding him of Weir. "You must not blame yourself for something you could not have known was going to happen. Everyone else would likely have made the same mistake. After all, it was only a scan – standard procedure on all foreign objects, am I correct?"

McKay nodded. "But –"

"Rodney," she said sharply, and he realized he had been able to get out only one complete sentence so far. "I am alive. You are alive. Zelenka is alive."

"But the lab –"

"Can be rebuilt." Nyx looked at him with placid certainty. "No one is going to call you an idiot because Wraith technology is so fragile."

"Carson –"

"Carson was angry and did not mean to cause you pain with his words." She smiled, as though knowing he was becoming frustrated by not being able to finish a single sentence. "One cannot blame him for being tired."

McKay let out a sigh. "I guess not." He looked down at her and even in a hospital gown she was so beautiful he never wanted to look away. "Nyx, I'm sorry." He saw she was about to contradict him again and rushed, "Even though it's completely not my fault. I'm still sorry. It's just that you weren't even involved in the project – you weren't even in the lab."

Her lips twitched. "It's fine. I will recover."

"Okay." He nodded. "That's...that's good." _Great, McKay, way to go. Say something a little less intelligent._ He sighed. "Goodnight. Try to get some rest."

"I will." Nyx cocked an eyebrow and gave a maddening smile. "If you promise not to disturb me again, I think I may actually be able to sleep through the night."

He knew he blushed. "Sorry. Well, I'll see you tomorrow, then." Turning, he headed back to the bed, and, out of the blue, he noticed that he no longer needed the pole for support.

* * *

"Lovely morning, isn't it, Rodney?" Beckett thought dryly that the greeting sounded excessive even to himself, but he couldn't seem to curb his exhilaration. Falling in love clearly had a peculiar effect on people.

The scientist made a face. "Yes, absolutely wonderful. Of course, I'm sure it would look a lot better if I could, oh, perhaps actually see the sky for a change?" He gave the doctor a hopeful glance. "Carson, I'm fine, I swear. You can examine me all you want."

"All in good time, Rodney." Beckett leaned over Zelenka. "Good morning, Radek. How are you feeling?"

"I will be better when I can see," the astrophysicist replied, but he smiled. "I feel well. Perhaps today you should release McKay and I?"

"Let me just check on my other patient and I'll get back to you on that," Beckett promised. "I have a feeling I may be wanting to keep you until tonight at least, but Rodney certainly seems much improved."

"I _need_ to get back to my lab, Carson," McKay groused. "There are at least five experiments at any given time requiring my absolute and undivided attention, not to mention I haven't had a decent meal since I've been here..."

Beckett rolled his eyes and pulled the curtains open, since there was no need for them at the moment. "And how are you?" he asked softly.

Nyx smiled. "Better than yesterday." She gestured to the bag of urine. "I stopped bleeding during the night."

"That's excellent." He shone the flashlight into her eyes. "You're doing splendidly, and I've got wonderful news." He lowered his voice and gave her a wink. "I think Rodney's out of the infirmary today."

She tried not to look amused and failed. "I am glad he will be able to get back to his experiments," she told him. "He isn't so bad. I believe he has behaved admirably."

"Yes, even I'm surprised." Beckett crossed the room and aimed his flashlight into McKay's hazel eyes. That finished, he directed his attention to removing the IV from the scientist's arm. "Now, Rodney, I'm releasing you, but only on condition that you one, promise to use your foot as little as possible over the next week, meaning no off-world missions, and two, stay away from alien technology for as long as you can stand it."

McKay heaved a melodramatic sigh as he got out of bed. "Yes, Mother..."

Beckett shook his head. "The drama is eternal," he said, and checked Zelenka's pupils. "Radek, you're doing very well. You're still a bit concussed, but I'll let you out this afternoon if you promise to get as much rest as possible and stay away from Rodney."

The Czech grinned. "Gladly."

Beckett rested his hand on the man's shoulder. "Good. I'll have our loveliest nurse bring you breakfast this morning for you being such a brave lad. Not, of course, that it'll matter, seeing as you won't be able to tell if she's lovely or not without your glasses." He almost laughed at the disappointment on Zelenka's face, but patted his shoulder reassuringly. "I promise you, Radek, we're going to find that pair as soon as we can. I've got Sheppard scouting about the city for them in his free time, he can't be that hopeless."

Now he was squinting up at Nyx's IV. "I want to run another blood test on you, see exactly how anaemic you are. You may need a blood transfusion."

Her eyes widened. "You can't," she said simply. "I'm Phyrxian."

That gave him pause. "Your physiology isn't that much different from regular human physiology. Your DNA's basically the same. Why wouldn't it work?"

Nyx shook her head. "I do not know why, but I think it's a bad idea. Perhaps I should just eat meat or take some mineral tablets of some sort..."

"That's an idea." Beckett nodded. "All right, I'll give you iron supplements and let you have meat in your lunch today. But I still want some blood from you."

"All the blood you take from me might be the reason I am anaemic," she muttered. "Very well. You can run your tests." She nodded to the bag of urine. "Are you going to remove the catheter?"

"I want to leave it in for the rest of the day, just in case you begin bleeding again." He touched her cheek briefly. "A lacerated kidney's not a mortal wound, but it could get very nasty if it's not properly taken care of." He looked down at her as he changed the IV. "I'm giving you intravenous fluids and you're drinking water and you're still dehydrated. That worries me a little."

Nyx glanced up at the bag. "It does not worry me," she said confidently. "You judge my state of hydration from the colour of my urine, but the mineral balance of my body is different from yours, as is my consumption of meat. It is commonly dark."

"Oh." He blinked. "Well, I'm not an expert in xenobiology. So thank you for telling me that, it's another thing I don't have to have weighing on my chest." He held out the rubber tourniquet. "Arm." The process of taking blood was quick and then he was in a chair by her side, her hand comfortably ensconced in his.

They sat in silence for some time while Zelenka slept soundly in the other bed, the remains of the sedative in his blood allowing the poor soul to get some necessary rest. Now that McKay was gone, there was no need to continue dosing him, so Beckett had made sure he'd changed the drip. Nyx's drip carried vitamins and minerals, but nothing to keep her tranquil. She was quiet enough on her own.

"How did you sleep?" she asked him softly, and he started at the sound of her voice.

"Well enough, I suppose. Got a whole six hours." He laughed. "That's more than I've been able to get in a while. How was your night? Are you in pain?"

Nyx shook her head. "The Phyrxian pain threshold is high."

"Aye, but you not screaming doesn't mean it doesn't hurt." Beckett's brow furrowed as he studied her. "Rodney's close to being a hypochondriac. As long as he whines, I know he's all right. It's when he gets silent that I start worrying. You, I think if you were dying you wouldn't utter so much as a whimper of pain."

The corners of her eyes crinkled. "I think you may be right," she said. He took her hand in both of his and squeezed it ever so gently. Adjusting the chair, he leaned forward and rested his cheek against her hand, his head against her side. He felt the fingers of her other hand twist gently into his hair and he closed his eyes.

"Carson," he heard her whisper, "I think I lied when I said I did not fear. I think that love is the most fearsome thing I have ever experienced..."


	6. Chapter 6

There was a knock on the door, and Weir looked up. "John. Come in."

He stepped into the office, his hair sticking up all over the place. He looked like he had just rolled out of bed, but she knew that was just the way his hair was. "I talked to the doc last night," he told her, sitting down in a chair in a manner his military superiors would never have permitted, one leg over the armrest. "I have good news and bad news."

Weir sighed internally at the rigmarole. "Okay. Hit me with the bad news."

"Rodney and Zelenka are improving as expected," he said without any hint of humour other than the slight kick in his eyebrow and the twist in his lip. "Actually, Rodney should be out by now." He gave a mock shiver. "Scary, isn't it?"

"Extremely." She fought the urge to laugh and settled for a vaguely amused look. "And the good news?"

"First off, I found Zelenka's glasses. Never seen him so happy in his life." Sheppard leaned forward. "Would you believe me if I told you that Nyx has the gene?"

Weir's jaw dropped. _What?_ "What?"

"Yep. Our newest arrival is ATA-enhanced." He looked decidedly pleased with himself – as though the discovery had anything to do with him. "Personally, I think _she_ should be the one Rodney runs around and tests all his little Ancient doohickeys on."

"Until we either know more about this girl or you manage to teach Dr. Beckett to control his ability, you're still the guinea pig," she directed, and forced herself not to giggle at the way his face fell. "The Phyrxians can't be that different from humans, then."

"According to old Doc Beckett, she's pretty much the same as us. Minor differences, probably brought on by different diets or whatever." Sheppard gave a shrug that managed to indicate vast incomprehension – she wondered how he did that. "I don't know the details. But hey, we got fresh blood to test the chair on."

Weir's eyebrows skyrocketed. _Is he actually suggesting that we stick this girl into the brain of Atlantis?_ "I hope you're going to temper that statement with a cautionary warning," she told him. "We do not know enough about Nyx to allow her access to our controls. Do we even know her last name?"

He snorted. "She can't remember it and I hardly think it matters. Look at Ronan."

"Yes, look at Ronan," she muttered. "May I remind you of whose idea it was to bring him aboard, by the way?"

"And he's been nothing but useful." Sheppard looked at her like he was daring her to argue. He really was adorable, though, with that unruly hair. Just looking at him made her want to laugh. "I'm just saying let's wait until she gets better and see how good she is at fighting. And hey, she identified the Wraith thingy that Rodney blew up. Maybe she can help us in the technological arena."

"I don't think there's anything Rodney and Zelenka can't figure out on their own," Weir said dismissively. She didn't know what she had against the girl, but for some reason she didn't think she was trustworthy, despite the lack of evidence to support her belief. Yet even as she thought it she knew she was probably going to let Sheppard do whatever he wanted. "John, you need to stop bringing back strays."

He grinned. "Thank you, Elizabeth, I knew you'd see it my way."

"I haven't made any decisions yet," she began, but he cut her off.

"But you're going to." Jeez, he was infuriating. "Arentcha?"

Weir let her head fall into her hands. "Go, John, just go..."

* * *

The requisite five days had passed, and Beckett had pronounced her healthy – "Almost ready to get up and do a jig," he'd grinned – so Nyx was finally allowed to dress in Athosian garments given to her by Teyla and to enter into the well-ordered mess that seemed to be Atlantis. Her first trip was to the commissary, where, accompanied by Teyla and Ronan, she proceeded to cause a severe shortage of blue Jell-O and to greatly diminish the supply of meat. "I have never seen one person eat that many turkey sandwiches," Sheppard was overheard saying to McKay in frank astonishment. "I mean, not even _I_ come that close."

Later that day, Nyx had been introduced to her new quarters and was getting accustomed to the room when the door slid open and she saw Ronan standing outside. "Weir sent me to get you," he said. "You have one more session with Heightmeyer."

She sighed. "Are you serious?"

He nodded. "She thinks you're crazy. I guess it's a fair statement, given your ancestry."

Nyx stood, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. "Lead the way."

* * *

Heightmeyer had been waiting patiently for no more than a minute when the doors to her office opened and Nyx walked in. She looked none the worse for wear after her stay in the infirmary, although the eagle-eyed psychiatrist detected a difference about her stride. It was less surefooted, more wary, as though she were worried she would be blasted off her feet at any moment.

"Hello, Nyx," she greeted. "It's good to see you. Dr. Beckett took good care of you?"

The girl's glance flicked around the room in what appeared to be discomfort. _Am I imagining this because I'm hungry for gossip fodder?_ Heightmeyer wondered to herself. "Yes," Nyx finally answered. "He is a very good doctor."

Ah. That explained it. It was the whole bedside manner thing. Yet, Heightmeyer thought idly, Nyx did not seem to be prone to fits of overconfidence or delusion. Therefore if she thought there was some interest being displayed on Beckett's part, she was probably right.

_Okay, time for business_, she ordered herself, and cleared her throat. "I want to put you under hypnosis again," she told the girl. "How do you feel about that?"

There was a pause, and Nyx became deathly still. Looking at her, Heightmeyer saw no movement save for the faint rise and fall of her chest as she breathed. Her eyes were fixed unseeingly on the edge of the desk before her. It was almost unnerving, but then her gaze lifted to the doctor's face and she said evenly, "All right."

"Good." Heightmeyer let out the breath she hadn't even been realized she'd been holding, and slid into her monotonous, measured voice. "What I want to do this time is take you back to your past and try to find out why the Wraith are chasing you. Will you go back there, Nyx?"

A shudder ran through the girl's narrow shoulders, and something tortured came to life in her eyes. "I do not want to go back," she whispered. "It was dark there."

"You have to try." Heightmeyer's tone never changed from the rhythmic smoothness she used in hypnosis. "Close your eyes, Nyx. Close your eyes and relax. Breathe in and out with slow, deep strokes. Focus all your conscious awareness on your breathing."

Nyx's eyelids fell shut and Heightmeyer heard her breathing change. In approximately sixty seconds her muscles had slackened and the doctor knew she was going under. "Envision for me a wall of stone. It stretches up before you, as far as the eye can see in all directions. This wall is the only thing between you and your past. The reason the Wraith have hunted you for five years lies behind that wall."

Nyx's face was devoid of all expression, but now her eyebrows twitched and began to draw together ever so slowly as Heightmeyer continued. "The wall looks impenetrable, but it is only an illusion. The wall is only a mirage, the stones are held together only by fear. You have no fear, Nyx. Now reach out and touch the wall, and watch the stones crumble away into dust. What do you see before you?"

"A room," the girl whispered. Her voice seemed to come from very far away. "Metal and glass and...microbes."

_Did she just say microbes?_ Heightmeyer didn't know what she had been expecting to hear, but it definitely was not this. "What else do you see?"

"I am holding a vial, and smiling. I am pleased with the virus, it has done well. But..." Nyx's face contorted suddenly in an expression of something that was uncomfortably close to fear. "But they will be angry when they find out. They will come to find me, and they will destroy my people if I am not there to take." Her voice was anguished. "Why am I doing this? Why do I have to be the one to create this?"

"Nyx," Heightmeyer said in as controlled a tone as she could, "what does the virus do?"

* * *

"John, we have been over this." Weir leaned over the desk. She was standing and he was sitting, so by all rights he should have been intimidated, but he clearly wasn't. "Teyla says there is going to be another Wraith invasion soon – you can't go prancing off exploring worlds right now. We need you here."

He raised a hand placatingly. "First off, from what Teyla said it's going to be at least a month before the Wraith get enough hive ships together to launch a full-scale attack. After what happened the last time, I think they're going to be a lot more careful, which means we have more time to get our defenses ready. Second, we need to keep trying to establish trade between worlds. Who knows, someone out there might have a ZPM to spare."

"Why don't you ask Nyx?" Weir asked with thinly veiled cynicism. "She seems to have all kinds of knowledge at her fingertips."

The door flew open and Heightmeyer burst into the room. Her hair was awry and she was holding a file, waving it in the air as though it contained the secrets of the universe. "You're not going to believe this," she panted. "I know why the Wraith are after her."

* * *

"She did _what_?" McKay stared in outright disbelief at Heightmeyer. To tell the truth, Sheppard was feeling a bit confused himself. He found the image of Nyx as a mad scientist not only amusing but unreal. There was no way he could conceive of the wild girl he'd found in the Vargan forest standing in a high-tech lab cooking up some freaky microbial soup.

"I told you," the doctor said with what was remarkable patience considering that McKay had asked the question at least twice already. "Nyx was a Phyrxian scientist, one of their finest. She created a virus that was deadly to the Wraith and only the Wraith. It attacked their DNA, destroying the bases or some gobbledygook like that, and it was contagious."

Sheppard whistled softly and glanced at Weir. "I told you she could help us in the technological arena."

"Can she replicate it?" Weir was ignoring him. "If she could engineer this virus again..."

"The possibilities are endless," Beckett filled in. He looked as though he were in shock; Sheppard made a mental note to dig a little deeper into the whole Nyx-Beckett rumour that was running around Atlantis like a headless chicken. "We could not only eliminate the threat they pose to Atlantis and Earth, but decimate the entire species."

Now Heightmeyer was looking doubtful. "Hypnosis is taking its toll on her," she said. "Each time I take her back into the past and she remembers more of what happened and more of who she is she gets a little quieter, a little more withdrawn. I think it's possible that her regaining her memories could have untold repercussions for her psyche and her mental health."

Ronan caught Sheppard's eye. "Insanity by force," he remarked quietly.

Weir cleared her throat. "Dr. Heightmeyer," she said pointedly, and the doctor looked up. "I understand that Nyx's mind is a little fragile at the moment, and I understand that further hypnosis will make it worse. But if there is even the slightest possibility that you can get her to remember how she did it the first time –"

"Dr. Weir, I don't think you understand fully what I'm telling you." Heightmeyer was staring at Weir as though it were the first time she was seeing her clearly and she didn't appreciate the view. "I'm saying that if I put Nyx under one more time, she may die."

* * *

"It's a terrible decision to have to make," Sheppard said softly. He was running his hands back through what must have been the thickest hair Weir had ever seen, over and over, as if the texture gave him some kind of comfort. "If she goes through hypnosis again and gives us what we need to engineer the virus and comes out of it okay, that's great. If we risk it and we get what we need but she dies –"

"Then we will still have a new weapon to use against the Wraith." Weir widened her eyes, daring him to challenge her. She expected incredulousness, or even anger, but he just shook his head.

"It's not just her I'm thinking about," Sheppard replied, and now he looked more serious than she thought she had ever been conscious to see him since the moment of the last Wraith attack on Atlantis. "It's...well, it's Carson."

_Carson?_ She squinted. "Carson? John, you better level with me, because we are clearly not on the same wavelength here. What does Carson have to do with anything?"

"Nyx spent six days in his infirmary," Sheppard said patiently. "The rumour mill's currently churning out stories about how he might have gotten a little closer to her than normal." He sighed, rubbing his forehead. "Stories that have actually been confirmed by Rodney, who I also suspect is harbouring some emotions of his own towards our newest arrival."

"Oh great." Weir groaned and hid her face in her hands. Why couldn't life be straightforward for two seconds? She sat up a little straighter and collected her thoughts as best she could. "What do you suggest, John? That we allow this opportunity to pass us by? Think about it – we could have a way of dealing with the Wraith once and for all at our fingertips. Do you want it on your conscience the next time there's another Ford incident that you let this chance slip away?"

Sheppard looked away, and she knew she had been unfair. "Look," she said more gently, "I'm not saying that I consider her completely expendable. But she isn't –"

"She isn't what?" He lifted his head, and she saw bewilderment written across his face. "She isn't me or Rodney or Teyla? She isn't Zelenka or Ronan? Just because we don't know her doesn't mean she's not worth as much as they are."

"I didn't say that." Weir was trying to keep her voice calm, but John Sheppard could be mighty infuriating when he was ready. _Dammit, why can't he just understand this?_ "There is so much to be gained from this, John. The possible benefits –"

"Outweigh the probable damage?" His eyes met hers, and in them she saw a confrontation. "What if Heightmeyer puts her under and nothing comes of it but she still dies? Are you even considering Carson here? What about Rodney?"

Weir lost her temper. "John, if I actually thought about every possible ramification that could ever occur, I would never make any decisions!" She shook her head. "I am the leader of this expedition. This is my call."

Sheppard, elbows on knees, leaned his face into his hands. "Yes." His voice was muffled by his fingers. "It is your call." He stood up, and turned to go. "Elizabeth," he said, "I really hope you make the right one."

* * *

Ronan paused in front of the almost-closed door, his fist raised to knock. He wondered why he had agreed to come on McKay's mission of mercy to beg for Nyx's life. Perhaps it was because he too saw something he admired in the girl.

The scientist looked up at him. "What are you doing?" he asked.

Ronan would have answered, but his attention was being diverted to the voice of Dr. Elizabeth Weir, which he could hear perfectly through the small space in the door. "Dr. Heightmeyer," she was saying, "I'm ordering you to go ahead with the hypnosis."

McKay shifted impatiently. "Are you going to answer me or are you going to stand there and flaunt your ignorance and incompetence as though they were gifts from God?"

Ronan shook his head once in defeat and stepped away from the door. "The order has been given," he told the scientist. "We're too late."

* * *

"You're kidding." Beckett looked from one to the other. "You're serious?"

"Unfortunately, yes." McKay sighed. He looked dejected. "Elizabeth gave Heightmeyer the order to go ahead with the hypnosis. For all we know, they could be doing it already."

His knees felt weak; he needed to sit down. Beckett reached for a chair and sank into it. "It could be a good thing," he said quietly. "You know that, Rodney."

"Of _course_ it could be a good thing!" The astrophysicist stared at him. "It would have been a good thing if I'd been able to work the Ancient weapon I accidentally used to blow up five-sixths of a solar system too, but you know, regrettably, we don't always get what we want."

Ronan, leaning against the wall, seemed more moved than his facial expression was letting on. "If this works, it may be worth it. If it doesn't, Dr. Weir will have to learn the meaning of regret."

Beckett sighed, and was about to speak, but just then the alarms sounded all over Atlantis and the entire conversation became a moot point.


	7. Chapter 7

Sheppard couldn't believe his ears. "What?"

Moran shrugged helplessly. "The sensors can't be wrong, sir. The Wraith armada is on its way. I'm seeing ten hive ships, each complete with a full squadron of escorts."

He paled. "This is not good..." Weir was coming down the stairs, her hair looking almost as messy as his. He could tell she'd been sleeping, probably stealing some shut-eye in her office between briefings and meetings.

"What is going on?" she demanded of Moran, and Sheppard almost grimaced at his first taste of cranky Weir. The technician repeated what he'd just said, and she spun on Sheppard with a fierceness that made him think instantly of a wounded animal. "I seem to recall you saying 'it's going to be at least a month' – what the hell are they doing en route?" She turned to Moran. "How far are they?"

"Estimated arrival time is..." The technician entered something and peered at the monitor. "Three days."

Weir's jaw dropped. "Excuse me? The Wraith will be here in three days?" She stared blankly at Sheppard for all of five seconds, and then sprang back into action. "All right, Moran, I want you to contact Stargate Command, send them a data burst, compressed as per Dr. McKay's instructions. Ask them to send everything they have. The _Daedalus_, the _Prometheus_, nuclear weapons, the marines...no holds barred on this one." She jabbed a finger into Sheppard's chest. "_You_. Get McKay and Zelenka, tell them to send that message and get them in my office. _Now_."

* * *

Beckett burst into Heightmeyer's office, breathless and legs burning. Nyx was sitting sideways in a chair, one hand to her head. She looked groggy. "She was almost under, but the alarms went off, so I used it as an excuse to bring her back," Heightmeyer explained. "No threat of psyche damage this time."

He shot her a grateful glance, and then his eyes were all for Nyx as he knelt by her side. "Are you all right?" he whispered, framing her face in his hands.

She nodded. "I will be."

Mindful of Heightmeyer's presence but not caring a whit, Beckett threw his arms around her and pulled her close to him, wishing he could just hold her, let his heartbeat slow as he cradled her form against his. But it was not to be. He got one arm around her and helped her to her feet. "Can you walk?"

Nyx swayed slightly and then seemed to regain her balance. "It was a moment of dizziness. It has passed."

"All right." He looked at her. "Rodney radioed me. He says the Wraith are on their way. They'll be here in three days."

"Oh my God." Heightmeyer pressed a hand to her mouth, eyes wide. "We weren't expecting them for another month at least!"

Nyx's beautiful face was grave. "They must have tracked me here through the Ring your people used to take me off of Vargas."

"Then..." Beckett stopped, and a shiver raced up his spine. _Oh crap_.

She nodded. "They have not come to attack you. These are the ones who were hunting me." She glanced at him, desperation in her eyes. "This virus...the Wraith do not know I have forgotten it. They must believe I came here for your assistance in re-engineering it."

"They're going to attack head-on," Beckett realized, "with everything they have." He groaned. "We have to find Colonel Sheppard."

* * *

"I do not understand how forces could have been organized so soon." Teyla shook her head. "I received no knowledge of this from the Wraith."

"Maybe it's not Atlantis they want." Ronan shrugged. "Maybe they've come for her."

She looked up, and he saw realization dawn on her face. "Yes," she whispered, "that's it. They believe she still has the virus within her possession, or within her mind. That is why they chased her for five years."

"These Wraith are going to be very angry when they get here," Ronan said slowly. "The only way to avert a direct attack on the city will be to give her to them."

"I do not think even that will work. Even if we let them take her, the possibility remains that she could have given us the means to create the virus before we gave her to them." Teyla pressed her lips together. "No, Ronan. Even at the price of losing her, there will be a fight. There is no way to avoid it."

He nodded with grim determination. "Very well. Besides..." His eyes narrowed. "I would never have given the Wraith what they wanted anyway."

She laid a hand on his arm. "Neither I," she said quietly. "Nor any of us."

* * *

Weir gave McKay a glare that made his stomach do a somersault of anxiety. "Talk to me, Rodney. What do we have?"

"Earth is sending both _Daedalus_ and _Prometheus_, complete with nuclear warheads and rail guns, and as many men as they can spare." McKay squinted down at his laptop. "That would be about a hundred. Nowhere near enough."

"The journey from Earth to Atlantis will take four days; the Wraith will be here in three," Sheppard said. "We have to hold our own for twenty-four hours. The Air Force and Marine personnel are due to come through the gate by tonight. They're going to do the same thing we did last time – set up the rail guns around the city and try to bring down the Darts as they attack."

"Yes, but this time we are without the benefit of a whole lot of warning." McKay knew he sounded testy, but he was finding it very difficult to hide his nervousness. "Three days – seventy-one hours and twenty minutes, to be exact – is not enough time. We need another ZPM and we need it fast."

"The Genii have a ZPM," Sheppard suggested, and McKay was opening his mouth to snap something snarky at him when Weir interrupted.

"Which we know from experience that they are not willing to give, lend or even talk about." She shook her head. "You have to come up with something better than that, Rodney."

"He is right," Zelenka said. "Short of uploading the computer virus we came up with into the Ancient mainframe and triggering the self-destruct, we cannot hold Atlantis against the Wraith attack. We have no more drones."

There was the briefest of knocks on the door and then Beckett stumbled in. He was out of breath and had apparently been running. "This isn't the armada that was coming to attack us after the last one," he wheezed, pressing a hand to his chest. "They've come for Nyx. They think she has the virus."

Weir paid immediate attention. "If we give her to them –"

"Not a chance," McKay told her, shaking his head. "As far as the Wraith know, we could have gotten the formula for the virus from her already. We're as much of a threat to them as she is. Of course, they were planning to kill us anyway, so that doesn't make much difference, but the point is that there is no way around this."

Beckett sat down. He looked shaken, and McKay couldn't blame him. "So what now?" he asked the two astrophysicists.

Zelenka sighed. His face was serious. "Panic."

McKay nodded in full agreement. "Evacuate the city, get everyone to an Alpha site, upload the virus into the mainframe and set the self-destruct."

Sheppard's hand hit the table with a crack that made the whole room flinch. "That's not good enough!" He glared at McKay, who fought the urge to cringe. "Look, I don't know anyone here or back on Earth who's smarter than the two of you. And, fortunately, you both work well under pressure. This is _a lot_ of pressure. Enough, I think, for you to be able to do the impossible."

McKay exhaled. He glanced at Zelenka. "Radek?"

The Czech was deep in thought. "Perhaps there is a way to get the shields to hold for some time. It will very likely burn out the ZPM. But it could work."

McKay snorted. "You're thinking about using the naquadah generators to boost the ZPM and using that to power the shield? Impossible. That would mean shutting down everything else in most parts of the city, confining everyone in Atlantis in this complex and using the bare minimum of power. Plus if it's going to hold long enough to give us a fighting chance, we'd have to localize the shield over here alone, leaving everywhere else vulnerable to attack. If we survived, we'd have to rebuild most of the city!"

"But it is possible," Zelenka argued. "We would need to forgo all communications and monitoring systems and darken even here, but it is as I see it the only way to hold the Wraith off long enough for Earth's aid to come. We will be blind, but we will have our defenses."

Weir held up a hand, effectively halting the flow of technobabble. "How long will the shield hold?"

"That's the fun part," McKay said. "At full strength, maybe three and a half hours. After that it'll deplete slowly over the course of maybe nine hours to nothing. And then we'll still be without power."

"Wasn't Carter working on a power source back on Earth?" Sheppard broke in. "Can't they bring that through the Stargate?"

"If we send them another data burst, we're not going to be able to hold the shield any longer than an hour," McKay informed him, exasperated. "Do you have any idea how many light years away Earth is, Colonel? It takes a lot of energy to hold the Stargate open, even if it's just for a second –"

"All right, both of you." Weir rubbed her forehead. "Rodney, Radek, see if you can get me a 'likely' on that naquadah generator plan. John, you and Teyla go around the city, see if you can help the Athosians to get their things together. Tell them we're going to confine everyone to this complex for the duration of the attack. Just get them prepared."

Sheppard nodded and made for the door. Beckett looked up. "And me?"

"Go back to the infirmary," she told him. "There's nothing you can do here." The doctor nodded, and he had turned to walk away when she added, "And Carson?" Her voice dropped so low McKay nearly missed her words. "Tell Nyx I want to see her. Now."

McKay felt his heart stop.

* * *

"She wants to see you." Beckett's guileless blue eyes were troubled for her. "Nyx..."

"I will go," she told him, placing both hands on his shoulders. "There is nothing she can say or do to me that I do not deserve for having involved your people in a fight that was not theirs."

"The Wraith were coming anyway, this is just a bit sooner than we expected." He ran a hand back through his hair in distress. It was sticking up in the front. His voice rose and fell with the ebb and flow of his agitation, and Nyx loved him for the way he worried for her. "It's not your fault," he said. "Sheppard brought you back with him, he never asked for your permission."

"I wanted to leave," she said softly, and shame burned inside of her. She had led the Wraith to these people in reward for the kindness they had shown her. And now surely she was going to bring death upon the man that she loved. "I must go, Carson –"

Her words were stifled, because, incredibly enough, he was kissing her. His arms were around her and he was holding her against him, and his lips were sweeter than any honey. "I love you," he whispered, his forehead pressed to hers, and she was jolted to see tears in his eyes. "No matter what happens."

Nyx wanted more than anything to reassure him somehow, to smile for him and tell him that things would heal themselves and that she would be fine, but somehow she couldn't find it within herself to lie. Instead she told him, "Whatever comes of this...I truly am sorry."

"We'll beat the Wraith, we've done it before." He brushed her face with the backs of his fingers, his head cocked to one side as though he were trying to fix the memory of her face in his mind forever. "They're not invincible." And now the tiniest of rivulets was making its way down his right cheek. "No matter what, I'll always love you."

She smiled, knowing it was a façade he would easily see through, and disappeared through the glass doors into the briefing room.


	8. Chapter 8

"You can't stop her from feeling like this is her fault." Heightmeyer looked up at Beckett from over her sandwich. "She has to come to terms with these circumstances herself."

He was pushing his food around on the plate, clearly not hungry. The potatoes had mixed with the peas enough to have turned the whole thing into a rather unappetizing-looking mess. "I know," he said, and sighed. "God, I just feel so useless. I mean, I'm in love with this girl. She means more to me than anything in this world – well, except my mother." He gave a small laugh. "And I can't do anything to help her."

"It's all in Dr. Weir's hands now." Heightmeyer laid the last slice of bread on the plate. Somehow, Beckett's solemnity had stolen her appetite as well. "She's a good woman and a good leader, but she's under a lot of pressure right now. And she's afraid. She's afraid that by allowing Nyx into Atlantis she's somehow responsible for calling the Wraith on us."

"Nyx herself had no idea why they were chasing her." Beckett pressed his hands to his face, and she saw a look of uncontrollable grief flit across his features. "Sheppard didn't even ask her if she wanted to come back."

Heightmeyer hit him with what she hoped was an insightful glance. "Are you saying that it's his fault?"

"It's no one's fault," he said. "It just happened. Fate, coincidence, destiny...whatever you want to call it. None of us wanted this."

She nodded in silent agreement, and she knew her face betrayed her sadness, although it could not mirror his own. "Now we see if Dr. Weir recognizes this as well."

* * *

"For the seventy-second time, Radek, it is not going to work!" McKay stuffed the remaining half of his turkey sandwich into his mouth and leaned over the keyboard. A few keystrokes later, the flashing text 'SIMULATION FAILED' showed the fruitfulness of his actions. He put the sandwich down next to the laptop. "See? Simulation failed! Happy?"

"You are not coaxing everything from the generators," Zelenka said. "Change the equations."

"If I try to milk these things any more they'll overload after fifteen minutes," McKay told him dismissively. "We can power the shields, sure, but not long enough to matter. Plus the rest of the city will take unacceptable levels of damage we may never be able to repair."

"It is all we have." The Czech gave the scientist a long look. "If this fails and we are forced to destroy Atlantis, we will lose all of the knowledge of the Ancients."

That gave McKay pause. Briefly. "Okay, you want to try the impossible, fine. Let's take it again from the top..."

* * *

Weir folded her hands on the table and looked the girl squarely in the eye. _Breathe_, she told herself. _Don't judge her, you don't know her._ "Nyx," she said levelly, "the Wraith are coming to Atlantis. They're coming here for you."

"I know." The girl's dark gaze rebuked her for the guilt she was attempting to pass on. "I know that this is my fault."

"Well –" Weir wondered what she had been going to say. That it wasn't her fault? If Nyx hadn't come to Atlantis, the Wraith invasion would have been held off for perhaps another month. Which made it very much her fault. "Look, I just want to make sure you understand everything that's going to happen." _And that when my people die, it should be on your conscience_.

"I am aware of the fact that this city is in danger," Nyx stated, and now she was staring at the table. "I understand that these Wraith that have been chasing me have done so because they believe that I remember this virus that I created. And I understand that until I can reproduce the virus for you, or provide you with the means to reproduce it, you will consider me expendable."

"I don't consider you expendable." Weir gave an inward wince at how defensive she sounded. "But you're not a member of my team, and I don't know you very well." And this was sounding even less diplomatic, so she plunged ahead, "Let's just say it would be easier to lose you than, say, Colonel Sheppard, or Dr. McKay. But we would very much like to know how you engineered that virus." _It would be the least you could do for having involved us in your less-than-wonderful situation_, she thought but did not say.

"And I would very much like to tell you how I did it, but unfortunately for both of us those memories are inaccessible without serious threat to my life." Nyx ran a finger along the edge of the table. "I realize that I am partially responsible for this evil that has now come upon your people, but I am not willing to lay my life on the line for you."

Weir felt her temperature rise. "What about Dr. Beckett?" she snapped suddenly. "Would you lay down your life for him?"

The girl became very still, and now she lifted both hands to her face. "I would die for him," she said softly, so that it sounded like the most natural thing in the world. "But it is because of him that I say this – I will not take the risk of hypnosis upon myself again. How would he feel, Dr. Weir, if I were to die? Do you think he would handle it well?"

"Carson knows what he has to do," Weir spluttered, fighting her outrage, "and he knows that I make the decisions and that I make them for the good of all of us –"

"Except the peculiar alien you do not know." Nyx's eyes seemed to penetrate Weir, to see right through her into the confusion and guilt that lay beneath the irritation. "You have never trusted me, have you? You never bothered to know who I am now, you only wished to dwell on the past, how useful I might prove to you."

"The Wraith are a threat we cannot afford to play with," Weir said crisply. "We need every weapon we can possibly get to fight them. And if your virus can wipe out the Wraith, I'm prepared to take all steps necessary to get it."

"It's not that I don't want you to have it. But I do not want to go back to my past. I would not have forgotten if it were not painful to remember." Nyx sighed. "I want to help you," she said, and Weir could tell she was being honest, "and I wish I could. Only I cannot bring myself to go back. I would never be the same again if I did."

The doctor raked her hands back through her hair in frustration. "Nyx, it's a memory. It can't hurt you."

"Do you know how many people go through life without being able to find peace because they are tormented by the past? Memories are far more than mere shadows. They are ghosts of the past that never cease to haunt the present." Nyx stretched out her hands, and Weir noted with a flicker of surprise that there were no lines on her palms. No past, no future. "I erased my past," she said quietly, "and I will never go back. Never."

* * *

Beckett looked up as the doors opened, and Nyx strode from the briefing room. Her face was calm and unworried, but there was a curious pull on one corner of her mouth that gave her entire being an aspect of melancholy despair. He took hold of her shoulders, not liking the look in her eyes. "Are you all right?"

She gave him a half-smile. "For the moment." Her eyebrows drew together briefly, then the lines disappeared from her forehead. "I believe I have done my part to explain myself to Dr. Weir. What she will do is beyond my power to see."

"I know." He took her in his arms and held her to him. The fact that her heart beat steadily against his was a source of great comfort. "We have three days," he whispered into her hair. "It's in Rodney's hands now, really. There's nothing I can do."

"Meaning that you have free time you wish to spend with me?" Nyx raised an eyebrow questioningly.

Beckett grinned. "Aye. You must be starving to death. Do you want something to eat?"

"No," she replied, and, incongruously enough, her stomach let out a loud growl. He stared at her, and she smiled. "Okay, yes, I'm hungry."

He reached for her hand and twined his fingers into hers, and together they started down the corridor to the commissary. Three days wasn't a lot. _There are so many things I want to say to her. Will there be time?_

* * *

"Sixty-five hours and seven minutes to go," McKay muttered feverishly, refining his equations yet again. "Radek, this does not look good."

"Five hours of full strength is better than we expected," Zelenka replied. He was cleaning his glasses. "Now the shields will take sixteen hours to fully deplete. That leaves only three hours unaccounted for."

"You're not taking into account the fact that the complex will start taking damage when the shields drop to fifteen percent." McKay reached for a doughnut. "What if the Wraith get here sooner than we think? What if the help from Earth is late?"

"The rail guns will help to defend Atlantis." Zelenka replaced his glasses on his nose, and blinked owlishly at the Canadian through the spotless lenses. "This is our only choice, Rodney. We must be able to hold."

McKay brushed sugar from his shirt, and spoke with his mouth full. "Yeah, but what happens after? We'll have a depleted ZPM and no power. We'll be sitting ducks."

"The _Prometheus_ will have to return to Earth and bring back Colonel Carter's power source." Zelenka sighed. "The _Daedalus_ can defend us until we are operational once more."

"Yeah, but we don't even know if Colonel Carter's power source is finished, far less compatible with Ancient technology." McKay was waving around his hands, one of which was still holding a piece of doughnut. Crumbs littered the table and floor. "Radek, there is Ancient stuff here, there and everywhere in the universe, but there is only one of _me_. I can't be replaced if I get killed!"

Zelenka rolled his eyes. "And the only other way to access the Ancient repository is to get it downloaded into someone's brain, at which point the knowledge begins to overwrite their neurons. The only place we have found where we can access the database without having to do that is here."

"Okay, okay..." McKay shoved the rest of the doughnut into his mouth, licked his fingers and pulled his equations in front of him again. "I think I can finetune this one a little more. After this, we just gotta hook everything up and then it's up to the military to get everyone together." He frowned, scratched something out and then looked up. "Radek?"

The Czech pushed his glasses up on his nose and brushed some errant hair out of his eyes. "Yes?"

McKay was studying him in a most curious way, his eyes somehow exceedingly serious, his face wearing an expression more solemn than any Zelenka had ever seen on it before. "Nothing," he said at last, and turned his attention to the paper before him. "It was just nice knowing you is all."

* * *

By the morning of the second day, the Athosians were prepared, and they were moving their things into the main complex. The piers of Atlantis were mostly vacated, with Heightmeyer being one of the stragglers who seemed to be taking her glorious time in moving out, in direct convention to the orders of Weir, who now had an idea that Kate Heightmeyer didn't like her very much.

McKay and Zelenka had returned a verdict of 'maybe' on the naquadah generator plan, as Weir kept on calling it. McKay privately referred to it as Mission Impossible, but took great care not to let his nickname for the project slip in the company of their esteemed leader, whose insistence on optimism was just the slightest bit wearying. The 'maybe' was more than enough; it took Atlantis from alert and nervousness into a full-blown state of frenzied activity as scientists and engineers scuttled around, generators and crystals strewn everywhere.

Sheppard, Teyla and Ronan spent their time alternately helping the Athosians to move and trying to calm the panic that seemed to have set in among them. Fortunately, the people listened to and believed in Teyla, so there were no incidents. McKay and Zelenka were elevating their stress levels while trying to oversee the frantic scramble to get all the technology in place and run some final simulations. Weir was attempting to coordinate the chaos and succeeding only partially.

Beckett...well, he and Nyx were pretty much inseparable. They aided the relocation where they could, but having shifted the infirmary into the complex by the first night, they hadn't much to do except wait. They talked for hours and consumed incredible amounts of coffee, and, as was inevitable, fell more and more in love with each other...until finally, on the third day...

* * *

"Sensors are picking up something other than the Wraith," Moran said hopefully. He drew his sleeve across his forehead – the abundance of people in the complex meant that the temperature had risen a little too much. "I'm not sure what it is, it seems to be cloaked. But it's definitely there. More than one something. I'm willing to bet it's our help."

Weir nodded. "Estimated time of arrival?"

Moran exhaled. "Fifteen hours."

"And the Wraith?"

"They have two more jumps to make and then they'll be here." The technician sighed. "I'd give them an hour."

Weir turned. "Rodney?"

McKay grimaced as he looked at the screen. "Right. On it." He paused. "The simulations say our plan has a good shot at success, but I just want you to know that nothing like this has ever been tried before. All the equations, all the work we've done here over the past seventy-one hours and –" He checked his watch. "– fifty-nine minutes...it's all been based on an educated guess."

"A very highly educated guess," she told him. "I trust you, Rodney. We'll use it. Now let's get this show on the road." He nodded, not trusting himself to speak, and headed for the door. "Rodney?"

McKay turned.

Weir looked him right in the eye. "Don't let me down."


	9. Chapter 9

"You know, it's hard to find words to describe exactly how screwed we are. Because 'very' just isn't cutting it!" McKay, who by now was a ball of nervous energy, drew back as a spark leapt from the exposed end of a wire and swore. "Radek, there is no way in hell –"

"Theoretically, this is possible," Zelenka said. "Project Arcturus itself defied the laws of physics. But we saw it happen."

"Arcturus was a _major_ failure, by the way," McKay pointed out. "We never took into account the uncertainty principle –"

"Can we focus on the matter at hand?" The Czech gestured to the contraption that took up most of the available floor space. A peculiar linkage of generators, crackling wires, computers and their last ZPM, the whole thing buzzed as though with some kind of life force.

The door opened, and Sheppard just stopped himself from tripping over a cable. "Um, guys, I just came to inform you that the Wraith have one last jump to complete before they're here. So you might wanna step on it."

McKay went straight into hyper mode. "Okay. Radek, pull the power everywhere else except the main complex. Stay in contact by walkie-talkie. And on my mark, cut that too." Zelenka nodded and left the room.

"Anything I should know?" Sheppard asked. He was staring at the strange contrivance.

"It's going to get really dark," McKay said. He glanced out the window to the lights that twinkled on the piers and questioned into the radio, "Radek, tell me you didn't take the scenic route."

The walkie-talkie crackled, and the scientist came through. "I am on my way."

"My God, you are a paragon of inertia," McKay muttered to himself, and then, into the walkie-talkie, "You do know that if the Wraith get here before the shields are up that that's _bad_, right?"

Zelenka's voice answered, "I am cutting the power...now." All the lights blinked out at once, and now the only illumination on the planet came from within the complex itself. "Done."

"Good." McKay was typing away furiously, a last-minute modification that he hoped against hope would be able to slow the depletion process by another fifteen minutes. "I really hope this works..."

"Rodney," Sheppard said desperately. He was looking at his watch.

"Almost there..."

"_Rodney_!"

"Got it!" McKay grabbed the radio. "Three, two, one, mark!" He hit the key. There was a sizzling noise. And as everything around them plunged into darkness, there was a mellow whir and a faint glow emanated from the central part of the city as the shields rippled into place. Outside, there was a flash of red as what looked like fireworks erupted on the outside of the shield.

The Wraith had arrived.

* * *

Beckett, in a fairly clear corner of the main complex, watched the Air Force boys and the Marines set up the rail guns along the balcony. The statistics on the machines were impressive, but for Beckett's part he didn't care for violence. Which was why he was a doctor. _First do no harm_.

Nyx's hand came down gently on his shoulder, and he half-turned to look at her. Her dark hair was loose now, reaching well below her shoulders. Her features seemed closed, somehow, her mouth terse with concentration – or perhaps guilt. "Radek has confidence in this measure," she said quietly. "I am not afraid."

"I'm not afraid either," he told her, "but I'm worried. We haven't enough medicine to treat all the potential casualties here. Look around, there must be five hundred people in this one room. The repercussions of a direct attack, if the shield fails –"

"Shh." She leaned against him from behind, her body warm and reassuringly solid. "The Wraith are darkness. They will never overcome the light as long as men like you resist them." She slid her arms around him, rested her forehead against his back, between his shoulder blades. "Atlantis will not fall, Carson. I will see that it does not."

Beckett felt a tremor in the vague area of his knees. "What do you mean?"

Nyx's chin was on his shoulder, and she laid her cheek against his. "Do not fear, my love. I wish never to leave you." He was beginning to relax, but his blood ran cold again when she added, "But often we do not get what our hearts desire."

He turned, and she released him from the embrace. "Nyx, what are you thinking? You can't give yourself to them – they'd destroy us anyway. Not only would it do no good but it'd do a great deal of bad."

"I do not fear them," she told him softly, stroking the side of his face.

"Fearlessness is not invulnerability." Beckett closed his eyes. "God, I don't know how many ways there are to tell you that I don't think I'd be able to live with myself if anything happened to you."

"That one will be sufficient," Nyx said, and her lips brushed his. He wrapped her in his arms. She was so precious to him; somehow she seemed to matter more than the Wraith outside that were slowly destroying the exposed areas of the city even as the rail guns fired at them. He heard the sounds of Darts exploding – they could hit the Wraith but the Wraith couldn't hit them. _Maybe this might actually work_, he thought absently, his hands in her hair. Its curious perfume filled his nostrils.

She drew back, her fingers interlocked behind his head. "Now," she said clearly, "let me see what I can do to help fight these animals."

* * *

Ronan had found himself manning a rail gun. The immense weapon compared favourably to his own stunner rifle – Sheppard had mentioned something about the rail gun being able to deliver a guided projectile with an impact velocity of Mach 5 to targets two hundred and fifty miles off at a rate greater than six rounds per minute with a standard magazine holding ten thousand rounds. The words meant little to Ronan; what he found extremely impressive was the result he obtained when he fired the gun.

"Zero to thirteen thousand miles in one-fifth of a second," he muttered, a statistic one of the Marines had told him, and fired at a Dart. The ship went into a death roll and crashed into the water just off the city. "Not bad for human technology."

Nyx jogged up next to him, carrying a grenade launcher. She gave him a quick smile as she steadied the launcher. Darts were swooping everywhere, pitching and diving and firing heedlessly at the city. From the balcony Ronan could see small explosions on unprotected parts of Atlantis even as splashes of red bloomed against the shield where the Wraith weapons were deflected.

She fired the grenade launcher and the high-pitched whine of the nearest Dart's engines died abruptly. Smoke billowing from its tail end, the craft's nose dipped and it spiraled downward in an oddly graceful motion to blow into a thousand pieces on a pier below. "No," she said, moving over to a high-caliber machine gun not far away, "not bad for human technology."

They stood on the balcony, bringing down Dart after Dart, for what seemed like hours. Ronan didn't mind in the least; he took great pleasure in destroying Wraith, and it was a slap in the aliens' faces to be able to stand out in the open and fire at will, knowing he could not be hurt. The remaining Darts of the attacking force – and there were only a few – soon turned and headed back into the stratosphere and out of sight.

Ronan climbed out of the chair and patted the rail gun with affection. "There are more," he said, "and they'll be back."

"Yes." Nyx looked up into the sky. "For now they are merely chastened. But soon they will grow reckless and angry again, and they will return." She laid her hand on the machine gun. "And we will be ready."

* * *

"We have three more hours of full-strength shields," McKay reported. "After that, we'll get progressively more and more screwed until we're completely f –" He stopped, blushing guiltily.

"FUBAR," Sheppard filled in, and McKay nodded gratefully. At Nyx's politely confused look, Sheppard translated, "Fouled up beyond all recognition."

McKay shot the colonel a priceless look. "_Fouled_?"

"Let's keep this PG-13, shall we?" Weir cleared her throat. "It's approximately twelve hours until the _Daedalus_ and the _Prometheus_ arrive. How long will it take for the shields to deplete to a level at which the complex starts taking damage?"

Zelenka exhaled. "We have been working on some equations..."

"In a nutshell, we should start thinking about panicking in maybe ten, eleven hours," McKay said bluntly. "It's impossible to be more precise. The naquadah generators are operating in a state of barely controlled overload. If one of them fries, we panic a lot sooner than that."

"Rodney, Radek, I want both of you to get something to eat and then monitor those generators," Weir ordered. "Like they're your children. The instant something fluctuates or goes wrong, I want to know. Since internal and external sensors are both down in deference to the shield, we communicate by walkie-talkie." She nodded to them and patted the radio on her hip. "You know where to find me."

"We've tried counting the Darts we've shot down," Sheppard said, "but we kinda got fed up after a hundred and sixty-three. They just keep coming and coming..."

"Well, if ten hive ships are somewhere above us in space, there have to be close to several thousand Darts," McKay remarked testily, his mouth already full of turkey sandwich, "so your military boys have a lot of work to do."

"I'm not complaining," the colonel replied amiably enough. "We're invulnerable for the moment. It's just that we never run out of targets to shoot at."

"We can't begin to estimate the damage to the city until either a power source arrives from Earth or we can send teams out on the piers," Weir said. "From the balcony, I have to say it looks pretty bad, and it's probably going to get worse, am I right? I swear the Wraith are taking some kind of sick pleasure from crashing into Atlantis."

"They revel in destruction," Nyx spoke up quietly. "They would indeed derive pleasure from this."

Beckett folded his hands on the table before him. "The damage can be repaired as long as we survive to repair it. My worry is what's going to happen when the shields weaken and we start seeing casualties. The facilities here are rather less than adequate. It's hardly sanitary to operate in the midst of five hundred people."

"A single Wraith hit to this building could prove lethal," Teyla added. "Structural damage would put all of us at risk."

"Which is why we're working as hard as we can on the shields!" McKay knew he sounded irritable, however, he didn't think anyone would hold it against him. He performed well under pressure, but his patience deteriorated in direct proportion to his increase in brainpower, which meant he was trying as hard as possible to not speak.

"I think I hear them again." Ronan lifted his head, and sure enough, McKay could hear the earsplitting screech that signaled the return of the Darts for round two of the battle. The Runner gave an insane grin. "I'll be outside," he said, and made for the balcony.

Nyx rose as if to follow him, but McKay reached out and caught her elbow. "Can I talk to you a sec?" he asked.

She nodded, and they stepped aside into the corner of the room as Weir, Teyla and Beckett discussed the potential disasters that could occur if the shields were to fail. "What is it?"

"I know you want to fight them," McKay said. "I know you at the same time somehow feel yourself responsible for this. Nyx, just...just don't do anything stupid, okay? Don't get yourself killed because you blame yourself."

She smiled with her eyes, and almost reluctantly her mouth followed suit. "Rodney," she said in the most extraordinarily gentle tone he had ever heard, "I love Carson Beckett more than I have ever loved anyone in my entire life. I am not prepared to lose him. Not for Weir, Atlantis or even my own guilt."

"Nyx!" came Ronan's voice from outside on the balcony. "What are you doing? You're missing a great opportunity to kick Wraith ass!"

"Good luck, Rodney," she told him, her eyes meeting his. She moved away from him, strode to where Beckett sat and laid both hands on the doctor's shoulders. Leaning down, she told him something McKay couldn't hear, kissed the side of his head and set off at a run for the narrow strip of balcony outside where the rattle of machine guns could be heard.

Beckett looked up, and his gaze locked briefly with McKay's before he turned away. McKay, standing awkwardly in the corner, was instantly troubled – the doctor's eyes seemed to contain shattered glass; fragments, McKay thought, of his breaking heart.

* * *

The battle for Atlantis raged as it had thousands of years ago when the Ancients had defended it, and as it had mere months ago when the same team of humans had stood, outnumbered but not outsmarted. Darts kept up a constant rain of firepower on the exposed areas of the city, while the Air Force, Marines and Athosians alike manned the rail guns and machine guns around the balcony. Nyx proved to be an excellent shot, and she and Ronan soon commenced a competition as to who could down more ships.

McKay and Zelenka, armed with turkey sandwiches, doughnuts and coffee, stood careful guard over their monster machine, intervening twice to balance the overload. Weir mingled with the Athosians and civilian members of her team, reassuring them and ensuring that they had confidence in Atlantis' ability to best the Wraith. Teyla also did this when she could, although she was often with Sheppard, firing at the Darts with P90s and grenade launchers when they drew close enough. As it was, though, there were far more men than guns, although the help from Earth had brought considerable weaponry with them.

The supply of Darts was apparently endless, with some of the better Wraith pilots managing to inflict serious damage before the human gunners could shoot them down. Nyx and Ronan in particular wore matching mad grins as they brought the wrath of Atlantis upon their attackers. Time was precious, they knew – the shields would not hold forever, and they needed to destroy as many of the Wraith as possible before their defenses weakened.

The Wraith, however, soon became wise to this, and managed to stay mostly out of reach, zipping in and out of machine gun range with a racket like a thousand giant mosquitoes. Ronan gave a conservative estimate that there were some three hundred Darts still in the air and twice that number in the cruisers and hive ships still in orbit. The parts of the city not protected by the shield were burning.

The situation did not look good, but the fight was by no means over. In fact, the battle had just begun.

* * *

"Fifteen minutes," McKay said, and exhaled, sitting down from where he'd been hovering over a generator. "How's it going out there?"

Nyx, who was taking a break from her stint at the machine gun, was seriously depleting his stock of doughnuts. She wiped her mouth, shaking sugar crystals from her fingers, and gave him a thumbs-up while she tried to chew the impressive mouthful of triple-bypass-inducing food. "Good," she finally managed to get out, and swallowed. "The weapons are more effective than I thought."

Sheppard came in from the balcony. He unslung the P90 from around his neck and slumped into a chair. "Never thought I'd be tired of shooting down Darts," he told them ruefully, and then his eyes widened. "Hey, are those doughnuts?"

Nyx passed him the box just as Ronan entered, and soon what seemed like the vast majority of McKay's personal acquaintances were chowing down on his doughnuts. He gave an internal sigh. "Right, then. I'll just be over here if you need me...you know, making sure our last ZPM doesn't go kablooey..."

Ronan held out the box to him. "Want one?" he offered, mouth full.

McKay groaned and took the last doughnut. Sheppard, who was finished his by now, was pressing his hands to his face. "Okay, I think I need either a whole pot of coffee or an amphetamine shot."

"Caffeine's effects don't peak until an hour after it hits the bloodstream," McKay informed him with singular pleasure. "I'd go for the intramuscular injection."

"These amphetamines keep one awake?" Nyx queried, and at Sheppard's nod, declared, "I believe I may need one of these also. Ronan?"

"No, I'm great." The Runner flexed his muscles and stood up, towering over everyone in the room. "Lots of energy to kick Wraith ass. I'll be outside if you need me." He strode through the glass doors and back onto the balcony.

"Right, so off to find Doc Beckett." Sheppard placed both feet flat on the floor and braced his hands on the arms of the chair. He looked like he wanted to get up, but McKay knew his muscles were politely declining to obey him. "Actually, I might need that shot delivered to me..."

Nyx smiled. "I'll get Carson," she said, and left the room.

"An amphetamine shot?" McKay questioned the colonel, all jokes about intramuscular injections off. Amphetamines, for one, were delivered into veins. "You know how those things have you afterwards."

"Twitching and jitters I can live with," Sheppard told him. "The destruction of Atlantis I cannot. It'll keep me awake and alert, and that's what I need right now."

"Awake and euphoric is more like it." McKay had never understood his aversion to the use of amphetamines. Caffeine was just so much safer. Even Beckett had his reservations, and speaking of the old Scot, he was likely to live mighty long because just as McKay thought that, Beckett hove into sight with a bag in his hand and Nyx in tow.

"You want an amphetamine shot?" he asked Sheppard. "I'm not giving you anything to keep you up longer than six hours, mind. You're already lacking sleep."

Sheppard extended his arm. "Fire away, Doc."

Beckett was muttering medicinal gibberish as he readied Sheppard for the injection, probably for the benefit of Nyx, who was next in line for the shot. "Side effects aren't anything to worry about. Amphetamines are widely used in the military, together with caffeine, to keep pilots awake for long flights. When the drug hits your system you'll probably feel extremely powerful, but it's only a mental illusion, the muscles of your body aren't actually affected..."

McKay tuned out, watching as the doctor gave a small dose of the drug to the colonel and sat him down in a chair. From experience, he knew it would be a matter of minutes before the chemical reactions started taking place. Across the room, Zelenka had entered and was keeping an eye on their pet machine. From the disguised interest on the Czech's face he guessed it was safe to recommence listening, and was not disappointed.

"I want you to take care of yourself out there," Beckett was saying quietly to Nyx, whose gaze was far away. "When you get tired, come inside and I'll find you somewhere quiet to sleep. I'm not all that certain how amphetamines will affect your physiology..." McKay winced inwardly as the needle broke the skin and the girl flinched.

"A warning would not have gone amiss there," she growled affectionately as he pumped the drug into her veins.

"Well, I rather thought you were paying attention." Beckett looked into Nyx's eyes so long McKay began feeling acutely uncomfortable. In the chair next to the girl, Sheppard was staring fixedly outside in what McKay thought was an admirable attempt to mind his own business. "Good luck," the doctor told her softly, and squeezed her hand, and he was gone.

Sheppard now turned to McKay, and looked him up and down as though trying to gauge his mental stability. "When was the last time you slept? You look horrible," he said frankly.

"You know, Captain Kirk," McKay retorted, "you're a fine one to talk about being in a mess. Your _hair_ has probably achieved sentience and maybe even developed its own means of communication –"

"Hey!" Sheppard did a remarkable job of feigning outrage. "You love it!"

"Love it? I can't even figure out what kind of lifeform it is!" McKay snorted, and then the lighthearted moment was over. "Is the injection kicking in yet?"

"Yep," Sheppard said cheerfully, and stood up. "Okay, I'm outta here. Back to business. Rodney, you and Radek enjoy your...um...frumious bandersnatch." He spun on his heel and headed through the door with a jaunty bounce that was scarily close to a skip.

McKay's jaw had dropped, and he wondered if the Ancients had ever developed an epoxy that would help in future cases of the debilitating condition. "Frumious bandersnatch? My God, he's actually read Lewis Carroll!"

"You're talking to yourself," Nyx said with arch humour. "Does no one else wish to listen?"

He ignored her, choosing instead to focus the full power of his formidable intellect on the unlikely possibility that John Sheppard was a Carroll fan. "I knew he wasn't rowing with both oars in the water!"

Zelenka's attention had strayed from their not-so-inappropriately named frumious bandersnatch. "You mean he is not playing with all his marbles?" he queried.

"No, I mean he doesn't have a full deck –"

"Would you two shut up?" Nyx was laughing, looking back and forth between them. "Please?"

McKay briefly considered being objectionable, but decided against it. He chose instead to demonstrate what Sheppard would have deemed an astonishing level of maturity and subsided. "So I've shut up, what now?"

"Now the amphetamines are working," she told him, and rose to her feet, gathering her hair into a ponytail. "I'll be right back."

Famous last words.

* * *

Beckett, in the complex with some three hundred Athosians and one hundred non-military members of the Atlantis team, leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. Above the low murmurs of the Athosians and the more frantic whispers of the civilians, he could hear the spitting of machine guns, and the strange _tseew_ of Wraith fire. Men yelled to each other on the balcony, shouting commands that made no sense to him.

There was a red flash of light, and the complex shook. Beckett's eyes snapped open, startled. The wall behind his head was vibrating. They had taken a hit.

_Nyx_.

He leapt to his feet, pushing his way through the huddled crowd, and ran out onto the balcony. Their shields were down – _has it really been eleven hours?_ he wondered – and the structure was taking damage. The men at the rail guns and machine guns, bless their souls, were firing furiously at the invading Darts, never ceasing their barrages, but it seemed to no avail.

He looked up. The building curved in a semicircular way so that the wall continued across from him. Nyx was running, leaping over fallen soldiers and dodging swinging guns. Behind her, a Wraith sweeper beam chased her shadow across the balcony.

Beckett's mind flashed directly to mindless panic. "Nyx!" he cried out. From across the space, her eyes met his, and he gripped the railing in an ineffectual rage at the anger and fear that seethed in their depths. Fear. Fear that Nyx swore she did not know.

And then, just like that, she was gone.

* * *

Sheppard emptied his magazine into a Dart that was already heading into the sea, and was just reloading when, as one, the ships went into sharp turns. They spun in synchronized motion, and shot back up into the sky. He stared after them with dumbfounded confusion. _What the hell?_

"John!" His radio was crackling. It was Weir's voice. "John, are you there? What the hell is going on?"

He reached for the walkie-talkie, dazed. "You're not going to believe this," he said. "They left. The Darts, they're just...they're _gone_. All of them. Just like that."

"Did the _Daedalus_ arrive?" Weir asked, her voice sounding somewhere between hysterical joy and frenzied terror. "Is the _Prometheus_ there? Why did they leave?"

Sheppard squinted up into the sky, and a dark shape was just visible above the clouds. Bursts of energy shot from it at a point he couldn't see, and his heart surged with joy. "Yes! They're here! Our tech support has arrived!"


	10. Chapter 10

When McKay heard the news, he thought he could do cartwheels of exhilaration. The Wraith were gone, and Earth's help was here. The helpful crew of the _Daedalus_ had also brought along a power source, a Mark Two generator that had been specially tinkered with by the lovely Colonel Carter so it would manage things nicely. And, fortunately, the wonderful people of the Air Force would stay as long as necessary to clean up the aftermath of the battle.

As soon as Sheppard had come back inside, he'd pretty much passed out in a chair, and three hours later he was still sleeping. It was a nasty side-effect of amphetamines, which was precisely the reason McKay preferred good old-fashioned coffee. Speaking of coffee, though, he sure as hell was tired, and he thought Sheppard had the right idea for a change.

The doors to the lab opened, and Beckett entered. He looked horrible; his eyes were bloodshot and his hands were shaking. He held onto the door as though his legs could not longer support him. "Rodney," he said in a voice devoid of every recognizable emotion save pure sorrow, "where's Elizabeth?"

"I don't know," McKay replied slowly, worry building very fast. "Carson, what's wrong?"

"Everything." The doctor took a step forward and wavered, and McKay leapt to his feet to guide him to a chair. "Rodney...the ships from Earth didn't chase the Wraith back."

"What?" McKay stared at him. The dread mounting inside of him forewent the process of exponential multiplication and hit panic level instantly. "What are you talking about?"

"They got what they wanted." Beckett's face crumpled, and he buried it in his hands as his shoulders began to shake. Through sobs that wracked his entire body, he managed to say the one word that McKay did not want to hear. "Nyx."

* * *

"What?" Weir's eyebrows seemed to have become fixed near her hairline. "What do you mean they took her?"

"They took her as in Wraith sweeper beam took her," McKay said impatiently, "which means she's probably on one of the hive ships by now. The Mark Two generator the _Daedalus_ brought can power the puddle jumpers, we can go and get her back –"

"Rodney." Weir held up a hand. "Not happening."

"She's one of us now!" he told her loudly and belligerently. At that moment he couldn't really say that he cared very much whether he pissed her off or not. "Nyx is as much a part of this team as anyone else, and –"

"And right now the _Daedalus_ and _Prometheus_ are in deep space," Weir said, and her face was pale, "hunting down and destroying the hive ships, one by one."

* * *

McKay was pacing the briefing room. "With all due respect, Colonel, Nyx is on one of those hive ships!"

Caldwell, who had come on the _Daedalus_ and who Brig. Gen. O'Neill had temporarily put in charge of the Wraith business, shook his head. "In how many pieces? Dr. McKay, I appreciate your concern, but this girl is a casualty of war that the military is very willing to accept."

"She once engineered a virus to attack and destroy Wraith DNA," Teyla said quietly. "She does not remember how, but there is reason to believe that through hypnosis this knowledge can be brought to the front of her mind."

Caldwell was staring at Teyla like he couldn't believe his ears. "What?"

"A contagious virus." Sheppard ran a hand back through his ungodly hair. "Colonel, this girl is extremely important. She's one of us. And we don't leave our people behind."

"Colonel Sheppard, it's extremely likely that she's already dead." The lines in Caldwell's face had suddenly deepened. He looked strained. "Eight of the ten hive ships have been taken out. We brought along thermonuclear weapons and Goa'uld-derived technology to blast the crap out of them. I don't think I need to tell you we can't afford to let them go."

"Sir, we could have the ultimate weapon within our grasp," Sheppard told him. "From what we know, the virus is spread very easily from Wraith to Wraith – by breathing the same air. One infected Wraith on a hive ship could transmit the disease to all the others within a day."

Caldwell had eyes only for the military officer. "How long does the virus take to kill? Is it dangerous to humans?"

"The virus is only dangerous to the Wraith and it takes thirty-six hours until death," McKay said. "But none of that is going to matter if we don't get Nyx back!"

Caldwell buried his head in his hands, staring down the table as though it had offended him and he was trying to decide how to punish it. Finally he gave a sigh, and straightened up. "I'm going to call a halt to the destruction of the hive ships," he said. "Colonel Sheppard, if you would like to get some men in the sky and see how best you think you can get this girl back, now would be a good time."

McKay breathed a sigh of relief as Caldwell left the room. "Okay, John, let me get Radek over here, because although it may surprise you, I have an idea..."

* * *

Nyx made herself as small as she could and tucked her body tightly into a corner of the tiny holding cell. She had long acknowledged that there was no way she could escape without outside assistance, so now all that was left to do was wait. She was patient. She could do that.

But the sound of footsteps was echoing down a nearby corridor, and something inside of Nyx recognized the sound as Wraith bootheels. She pressed her back against the cold metal wall and told herself, _I am not afraid. I hate, I do not fear._ But who was she trying to fool?

The Wraith stood before her, its hair reaching almost to its knees. Teeth bared, saliva dripping from its mouth. Nyx met its eyes and forced her heart to beat slowly. "Nyx Shaona," it said, and licked its teeth. "We chased you for five years."

She made no answer, but never looked away from its eyes, those strange yellow eyes with slits for pupils. "You would have destroyed us," it told her, "but we have found you. We want the virus."

"You may not have it," she said, and her voice was soft, resonant, almost amused.

"Your Phyrxian arrogance will not save you," the Wraith hissed, and stepped right up to the bars. "Do you think we cannot feed from you too? We did not keep Phyrx as a culling colony, but believe me when I say that I will not hesitate to take you if I find you useless."

"Is stupidity genetic?" Nyx asked. "You may not have it because I do not remember it."

"Do you think me a fool?" The Wraith stretched through the bars and grabbed her hair, fairly dragging her to her feet. "You fled to Atlantis to share with the Earthlings the virus you created to destroy our race. But we have come in time. There is no way you could have reproduced the virus for them in such a short time."

"I could not have reproduced it even if I wanted to," she said calmly, although the Wraith was pulling her hair painfully. "I told you, I do not remember."

The Wraith sneered, and pulled her forward until she could smell its sour breath. "We have a memory device," it told her. "We will extract the specifics of this virus from your brain and alter it to our own design. And then I will have the pleasure of absorbing your life as slowly as possible so that you can hear yourself scream..."

* * *

Sheppard stared at McKay as though he were speaking Latin. "That's your plan?"

"Well, there are some holes," the astrophysicist acknowledged. "First of all, the puddle jumpers would have to get fairly close to the hive ships in order to scan the interiors. Then there's the difficulty of actually getting on board. The most possible way certainly seems to be by sweeper beam, which would leave us in a cell at the mercy of the Wraith."

"The plan is not foolproof," Zelenka offered, taking off his glasses to clean them, "but it is the only one we have had time to come up with."

"Bad idea," Sheppard said, shaking his head. "Bad, bad idea."

"Hey, genius," McKay said bluntly, "feel free to contribute a better one."

"That's the thing," the colonel muttered. "There is no better idea." He sighed. "We're never getting permission for this from Elizabeth. Not a chance in hell."

"I want to go," said a faint voice, and they looked up to see Beckett leaning on the doorframe. "It's only fair."

"You're our Chief Medical Officer," Sheppard told him. "Doc, you gotta stay. Trust me, if there's a way, we'll find it." He looked across the table at Ronan and Teyla. "You guys up for this? Knowing what the risks are?"

Teyla bowed her head. "Nyx has become a friend," she said quietly. "I would risk my life for her as I would for any of you." Ronan didn't bother to speak, he just nodded in agreement.

_Of course they're up for it_, thought Zelenka with an inward smile. _Show any of Colonel Sheppard's chosen something potentially dangerous and unpleasant and they can't wait to try it_.

"Okay." Sheppard laid both hands on the table, palms down. "We have permission from Colonel Caldwell, who is in charge of Atlantis until we get everything back together, right? So technically we don't need Elizabeth's permission."

"If Dr. Weir finds out," Teyla said, "she will never let us go."

He looked at her. "Well then we just make sure she doesn't find out until we're gone." And now he turned to Zelenka. "Radek, I want you to do me a favour."

* * *

"Hold still," the Wraith commanded sharply, forcing her into a strangely fashioned chair. Clamps were fastened around her wrists and ankles, and then slowly, almost tenderly, the Wraith buckled some sort of leather belt around her forehead, pinning her head motionless to the headrest of the chair.

Nyx watched the creature, careful to keep her inherent disgust out of her face. "What are you going to do to me?"

"I told you, we have a memory device. It is designed to scan your conscious mind and filter your knowledge into our databases." The Wraith smiled dangerously. "Soon I will know everything you know."

_Which is not much_. Nyx comforted herself with the inevitability that the Wraith would realize she knew nothing, grow angry and then feed swiftly from her energy. She could die with dignity knowing she had not helped them.

"I have heard this causes great pain," the Wraith told her, opening its hand and showing her three small triangular objects made of some sort of iridescent metal. Three tiny prongs extended from the back of each, and there was a minute hole in the centre of the front.

"I am not afraid," she said, and just managed not to grimace as the Wraith drooled. A small puddle of the vile liquid was forming on the ground. She wondered internally if it could ever close its mouth properly.

The Wraith's lips stretched now in what could have, horribly, been a smile. "So you say." Grasping one of the small triangles in its long-nailed hand, it pressed the device to the centre of her forehead, between her eyebrows, and there was a sharp pang as the prongs cut through her flesh. The other two it placed, equally painfully, at her temples.

"That did not cause great pain," she informed the Wraith, which was heading in the opposite direction.

It laughed. "That was just the beginning." Now it was holding a peculiar machine in its arms and bringing it towards her. There was a screen and three wires with what looked like needles at their tips. "This is what will tell me everything." The Wraith set the machine down somewhere behind her and she heard it flick a switch. There was a humming noise, and instinctively Nyx shut her eyes.

And suddenly, there was agony as the wires snaked out from the machine and into the holes in the triangles the Wraith had embedded in her skin. Her brain burned; it felt like the contents of her head were on fire. Nyx fought the urge to scream, and bit down on her tongue until she tasted blood in her mouth.

"Pain?" she dimly heard the Wraith ask her. "Yes...I warned you, didn't I? It will only get worse."

Nyx's eyes opened against her will, and she realized she had lost the ability to control her own movement. Her vision blurred, and she felt muscle spasms ripple through her, causing painful cramps to erupt throughout her body. Her head was throbbing to the rhythm of her stilted breathing, an acute pain that seemed to extrapolate from the triangular nodes on her head and focus somewhere at the base of her skull before branching out in tributaries of raw anguish throughout her entire being.

"Memories," the Wraith murmured, and it must have been reading through the information that was surely being downloaded into the machine. "Where are your memories...give me the virus!"

Nyx's back arched; her muscles seized abruptly, and she ground her teeth against each other so hard she wondered that they didn't splinter. "I do not have it!" she hissed through her clenched teeth, and moaned at a sharp flash of what felt like white-hot fire behind her eyes.

The Wraith gave a roar of rage and slammed its fist into the machine, shattering the screen. "You are the one!" it growled, jerking the wires, one by one, from her head. Tiny rivulets of blood spilled from the holes in the nodes. "You created the virus! Why can I not find it in your head?"

"I told you," she said, and now her voice was only a whisper, "I can't remember."

The Wraith grasped the headrest of the chair with both hands, its skin close enough to hers for her to feel that it had no body heat. The only things she could feel coming from it were stillness and thirteen different breeds of wrong. It lowered its face to hers.

"You cannot give me what I seek," it said, and now Nyx could feel saliva falling onto her thigh. "You are of no use to me except as food." _Yes_, she thought. _A swift death_. It raised a hand, flexed freakish grey fingers, and laid them against the side of her face.

Two things happened. First, Nyx jerked her head to the right as its flesh seared her with an indescribable burn, and second, the Wraith recoiled as though it found her absolutely repugnant. It caught its right wrist in its left hand and stared at the palm in horror. "I cannot feed on you," it hissed, seeming to recover, "but there is another option available to me." It straightened up, looking down at her, and now she could definitely classify the expression on its face as a sneer. "You will serve as a warning to your friends of what happens when we are crossed."

* * *

Beckett had been restored to his infirmary, which was an offshoot of the main complex that hadn't suffered much damage. All the equipment was being brought slowly back in by a number of technicians and military lads, and the place was beginning to look respectable once more. Truth be told, though, Beckett himself wasn't feeling all that great. He had, or so he'd overheard Teyla telling Sheppard, acquired the airs of a condemned man.

Condemned Beckett certainly did feel. Love songs held new meaning for him; those depressing ballads Moran was always playing about unbreaking hearts and the like had taken on a significance he couldn't seem to get out of his head long enough to concentrate on anything else.

_They'll find her_, he told himself. _She's still out there. They'll find her_.

But did he really believe that? Could he honestly stand in front of the mirror and tell his reflection that he was particularly optimistic about Sheppard's chances of success? The idea was questionable in the first place – gating to the planet nearest the hive ship, attacking the ship and letting themselves be chased back to the planet in order to get picked up by a sweeper beam was not the soundest strategy he'd ever heard. It was surprising the lengths they were willing to go to to get her back. Rodney, the colonel, Teyla, Ronan...ready and willing to sacrifice their lives for someone they barely even knew. While Beckett, who knew Nyx better than he knew himself, had to stay in his infirmary like a good boy.

There was a soft knock on the door, and he glanced up to see Teyla standing there. She wore BDUs and carried a P90. "We are prepared to leave, Doctor," she said quietly. "I wondered if you wished to come to see us off."

He sat there, just looking at her, and ever so slowly, got to his feet. "I hoped we'd defeat them and this would be over," he said, and his voice shook. "I hoped we'd just be able to focus on putting Atlantis back together. I hoped this would be the end of it."

Teyla took his arm gently. "Endings are seldom what we hope for."

* * *

Nyx's barely conscious mind was cloaked in blinding pain. She knew indistinctly that she was chained to a wall somewhere, and that her body protested with every breath. Inwardly she cursed herself for being strong. _A weaker person would have died_, she thought hazily. _Instead I stay alive only to suffer_. And then those thoughts were chased from her with another blow of wracking agony, and the only thing left in her mind was, _Carson..._

"Okay, is everyone ready?" Sheppard asked, looking around at them. They were all armed to the teeth with conventional weapons as well as an attitude of something McKay personally referred to as kick-ass. The team had been assembled in the gateroom. It had been unanimously agreed upon that only Sheppard's team would go. In this case, that was Sheppard himself, Teyla, McKay and Ronan.

McKay squared his shoulders and looked up at Beckett, who was standing by the railing. He looked petrified and at the same time wistful, and McKay knew exactly how he was feeling. Neither astrophysics nor medicine was a field that specifically prepared you for losing loved ones and then having to face hell to get them back. Beckett nodded once, then turned and walked away.

There was a general consensus of 'ready' in answer to Sheppard's question, and McKay turned to Ronan. "Any great ideas?"

The Runner primed his rifle. "Kill them," he said grimly.

"Oh, well that's just infallible..." McKay stared at the Gate, and got lost in thought. He wondered what Weir would do when she found out. She was nowhere near the gateroom and out of radio contact for the moment, a result of some timely action on Zelenka's part. _Poor Radek_, he thought ruefully. _Wonder what she'll do to him when she finds out?_

"Rodney." Sheppard was seating himself in the puddle jumper. "Come on. No time."

"Yeah." McKay sighed. "Okay. Coming." He turned, and had gotten one foot on the ramp that led up to the jumper before something made him turn around.

A bright flash of white light shone down into the middle of the complex, blinding all present, and then was gone. Everyone had reacted characteristically – Sheppard had covered his eyes, McKay had hit the floor in anticipation of an explosion, Teyla had drawn her P90 and Ronan, absorbed in doing nothing, had failed to notice that anything had happened.

McKay blinked, spots still dancing behind his eyelids, and got the shock of his life. He, Ronan and Teyla all said it at the same time, one word of complete baffled astonishment.

"_Nyx_?"


	11. Chapter 11

McKay threw himself into action immediately, running down the ramp and over to Nyx's crumpled form. "Get Carson," he ordered Moran. Noticing the technician seemed to be frozen to the spot, he added in what he knew was probably the snarkiest tone he had ever used in his life, "Take your time. No hurry." Kneeling by the girl's side, he reached out to touch her hair and pulled back, gasping. His fingers were red with blood.

_This is bad_, he understood. _Very bad_.

Beckett had appeared out of nowhere, out of breath and sweating, and commenced being all frantic and Scottish and comforting on a level McKay couldn't even begin to describe. "Nyx? Can you hear me? All right, I've got a pulse but it's extremely weak, help me get her on the stretcher..." McKay assisted, and between the two of them and a harried-looking nurse they managed to get her onto it. "Love, you're going to be fine," he heard Beckett say, and the doctor's voice cracked. "I promise."

* * *

"How is she?" Weir asked. She had gotten over her anger; Sheppard thought it was probably due to the fact that they'd never actually gotten around to even dialing the Stargate. So she'd forgiven Zelenka for breaking her radio and even for faking a 'discovery'. She'd been a little disappointed that he hadn't truly found an Ancient game that was better than Spider Solitaire, but Sheppard thought she would eventually get over it.

Beckett looked like hell. He stripped off bloodstained gloves and tossed them listlessly into the bin. "She's been beaten," he said flatly. "She has various maxillofacial injuries, several broken ribs, a punctured lung and a subdural haematoma."

Sheppard felt his breath catch. He hadn't realized it was so bad. "What...what does that look like?"

The doctor turned a tortured gaze to him, and Sheppard fervently wished he hadn't spoken. "It looks like death, Colonel," he said. "They sent her back here to die."

"Is she conscious?" McKay asked in a hushed whisper. "Can we...can we see her?"

"I don't know if she can hear you," Beckett said, and faltered. Tears flooded his eyes, and he turned his face away as his shoulders began to shake. "But you can see her."

* * *

McKay sat by Nyx's bedside, and for once had nothing to say. Her head was swathed in bandages; her left eye had what Beckett called an orbital floor fracture. The white of it was red, while the skin beneath her eye had swollen into what looked like a pocket of blood. Her eyelids flickered constantly, and her eyes rolled, giving McKay the opportunity to notice, most disturbingly, that while her right eye moved freely, her left remained fixed.

"Entrapment of the eyeball," Beckett said hoarsely, pulling up a chair next to him. "The CT scan showed blood in her left maxillary sinus. But that's not the worst of it."

"What is the worst of it?" McKay finally found the courage to look directly at the doctor.

"You want the medical jargon?" Without waiting for the answer, Beckett said in a detached, clinical voice, as though trying to put some distance between himself and the subject matter, "It was clear she'd received blunt force trauma to the chest wall. The chest X-ray revealed a shift of the central structures of the chest to the right and absence of lung marking in the left lung field consistent with a punctured lung, caused in this case by three broken ribs. There's also tension pneumothorax – air in her chest cavity – that's creating pressure on the blood vessels leading to her heart. I've got a drain in."

"And the subdural haematoma?" McKay hardly realized he was holding his breath.

"Our CT scan shows she has a ruptured cortical bridging vein," Beckett said. "Basically, it's a blood clot formed beneath her dura mater, which is the outermost layer of the membrane between her brain and her skull. We've just brought her out of the operating theatre. I tried to repair the vein and I've taken out the clot, but as you can see, she's still bleeding." He gestured to the draining tube that emerged from the bandages around Nyx's head. "She's hooked up to an intercranial pressure monitor that's checking on the pressure inside her head." He glanced at a small screen on the other side of the bed. "Not wonderful."

McKay exhaled, and stared at Nyx. She lay perfectly still, her chest stuttering as the respirator helped her breathe. The unsteady beeping of the heart monitor was the only thing showing she was alive.

But the worst thing by far was the helplessness on her face.

* * *

"How likely is recovery?" Teyla asked Sheppard in the commissary. She and Ronan had also taken turns sitting with Nyx, but it was mighty frustrating to just sit there and know there was nothing you could do.

"Carson's trying to be optimistic, but I think he has his doubts," Sheppard replied, and stared at his peas. "There's bleeding in her brain. That doesn't bode well for her even if she does survive."

"I agree. I do not think Nyx would wish to be a potato." Teyla took a sip of her tea, oblivious to Sheppard's startled snort. When he had managed to sober himself up, he informed her that the term was 'vegetable', and she expressed surprise at having to be general rather than specific, which sent Sheppard into another fit, and he resolved to himself not to bother correcting her anymore. _Ah...malapropisms..._

"What do you think we should do?" she asked him seriously, and he felt like an idiot as realized she hadn't found it funny.

"I don't know," he said, and shrugged powerlessly. "Just be there for Carson, I guess. Because God knows if she dies, he's going to need us to be there for him."

Teyla nodded musingly, and went back to her tea without another word.

* * *

Beckett rested his forehead on the bed, his hand holding hers to his face. His head leaned against her hip ever so lightly; he had no wish to cause her any more pain than she was already in. In his hand, her fingers twitched, and he looked up to see her eyes flutter open.

"Carson?" she whispered. Her voice rasped in her throat. "I can't see you..."

Of course. Beckett sat up, running through the symptoms of subdural haematoma in his head. _Severe headache, slurred speech, limb weakness, neck stiffness, confusion, visual disturbances..._

"How are you feeling?" he asked softly, touching her chin lightly. Her head was wrapped up and he'd had to shave part of it for the operation, so her hair was out of his reach.

"I..." She trailed off, her right eye looking at him while the left stared unseeingly ahead. "There was great pain," she said at last. "The Wraith caused great pain."

Beckett fought down the seething wrath that threatened to overcome him. "What did they do to you?" he asked in what he hoped was a calm, considered voice.

"He searched my memory and did not find the virus...he was angry..." Nyx stopped, out of breath. He could tell it hurt her just to breathe. "He chained me to a wall and he hit me...again and again and over and over..."

Beckett was horrified to find tears in his eyes. "Jesus." He pressed her hand to his cheek and kissed it. "Nyx, you know –" He stopped, choking on the words. "You know that I love you –"

"Yes," she breathed. "I know. You are all that is...important in my life." She closed her eyes. "I am so tired, Carson. I am dying."

"No," he said, so strongly he almost convinced himself. "You're strong, Nyx. You ran from the Wraith for five years. Don't let them get you now."

She tried to smile and he felt his heart break. "You know they only sent me back to die."

"You're going to be fine, Nyx. I've operated on you and sorted everything out." He bit his lip, hoping she couldn't see the streaks on his face. "Trust me, you're going to be all right."

Nyx was struggling to breathe. "Carson, please," she whispered. "Don't lie to me. I can feel my life fading with every movement, every word. I know I'm dying."

Beckett pitched forward and buried his face in her abdomen, now crying for everything he was worth. "I don't – I can't –" He reached across her with his right arm and hugged her as gently as he could. "I can't lose you."

"I wish to never leave you," she said, "but I fear I do not have a choice." The beeping of the heart monitor was becoming increasingly erratic, and with every breath Nyx groaned in pain. "Carson..."

He stood, leaning over her, and saw the blood draining from her face. He looked up. McKay stood framed in the doorway, his eyes wide with incomprehension and his face as white as that of the girl on the bed. "Get a medical team here _now_," he said with desperate urgency. "Everyone!"

Nyx tried to speak, lips moving soundlessly, and Beckett's throat constricted. "Don't talk."

"Carson," she managed to get out, and took a shuddering gasp of air. "Sorry..."

He blinked, and Beckett's vision was blurred with his sudden tears. "Nyx," he whispered fiercely, and said to _hell_ with medicine, she was _dying_, and kissed her. Drawing back, he saw fire burn in her eyes, but he knew it was no blazing flame, only the brief flickering of a candle before it dies forever.

"Love..." She took one last, painful breath. "You." Her fingers tightened on his, and then slackened. Her eyelids fell shut, the heart monitor went into a toneless screech and Beckett let the tears flow freely, because the closest thing to perfection that he had ever known was dead.


	12. Epilogue

When the medical team made it to the infirmary, they found Beckett weeping beside the lifeless body of Nyx. Carefully and efficiently they gathered him up and got him to his quarters, where Weir had him put on suicide watch – "Just to make sure," she said defensively when Sheppard questioned her sanity – and proceeded to remove the various bandages, drains and tubes from Nyx's body, which was then placed in the morgue.

McKay walked around in a daze for what seemed like forever, while Teyla sparred more frequently to work her grief out. Ronan became more terminally taciturn than ever, which meant that he fell into absolute silence, and Sheppard often accompanied him on long, wordless runs which somehow seemed to ease things for them both. Zelenka threw himself wholeheartedly into his work. It was astounding how in the course of thirteen days she had managed to worm her way so completely into their lives.

Beckett did recover, although perhaps not as fully as they would all have liked; there were new lines on his face that had not been there before, and his eyes seemed to contain a weariness that was at odds with his usual cheery good nature. Despite efforts to smile and be merry, he now appeared to possess the great wisdom and strength of character that comes from pain, and it did take some getting used to by the members of Atlantis, especially Weir, who often misinterpreted silence for despair when it was in fact fond remembrance of the girl he still loved.

For Beckett would never forget Nyx. No one would. McKay saw her in every generator he built and every doughnut he ate; for Ronan, she was present in weaponry, and in the scar on his hand from the bite she had given him on the day they met. Sheppard remembered her whenever he saw blood, while Teyla thought of Nyx when she donned her own Athosian garments, and Zelenka's new glasses reminded him of her.

She was a part of Atlantis now, and even more so because of Beckett's recommendation – some might call it insistence – that she be kept cryogenically frozen. His official reason for the proposal, which had been instantly approved by Colonel Caldwell, was that they might come across Ancient technology that would enable them to reanimate humans, and when that became possible they could finally acquire the means to engineer the virus that had not only infected and killed all the Wraith on the hive ship, but had, in a pleasant side-effect, prevented them from feeding on Nyx.

_After all_, Beckett reflected, _even Sleeping Beauty eventually woke up_.


End file.
